


bury my heart on the coals (next to yours)

by aryaflint



Series: in hearts at peace [3]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drug Use, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced miscarriage, Minor Character Death, Period Typical Attitudes, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2020-11-01 09:18:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 97,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20812727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aryaflint/pseuds/aryaflint
Summary: “They’re recruiting Protestant Irishmen to come over here as Specials.” Arthur had crossed his arms and taken a deep breath, his voice booming with revelation, echoing around in the crowded front room of the shop, but Brigid’s focus was sharp on the notice in front of her. Something like dread, like familiarity, twisted in her stomach. As she smoothed the leaflet down beside her plate, the paper rustled under her shaking hands.“To do what?” Ada interjected, soft and confused, for once breaking her own rule about staying out of Peaky business.Her heart racing, and before Arthur or any of the others could answer, the words tumbled out, heavy on her tongue. “To clean up the city.”-Or, Tommy Shelby and Brigid Murphy try to stay together; the world, it seems, has other plans.





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

> hello hello - long time, no posting! :)
> 
> after over a year of thinking and two months of serious writing, i'm back with the next chapter in brigid and tommy's story. it's going to be a rollercoaster, and it's going to be... very long. i originally planned for this to be ~50k words, but suffice to say, i've already ~35k and i'm not even halfway there. so this will be an adventure for me as well!
> 
> i really, really hope you enjoy it.
> 
> NOTE: this is the follow up to the first installment of tommy and brigid's story, "in hearts at peace," which you can find on my profile. while not totally necessary, i do recommend reading it first - this fic assumes knowledge of character developments/backstories elaborated there. :)
> 
> title adapted from "ghosts that we knew" by mumford & sons, which is so tommy/brigid that it hurts me.

Brigid awoke on the old grandfather clock’s sixth chime with a slow, deep breath, the last thread of her dream slipping away. She chased its warmth — something to do with summertime, a crisp breeze blowing through her hair, Tommy’s lips at her throat. The quilts had tangled around their feet in the middle of the night, and Brigid felt as frigid as the dead of winter. As her skin pricked with gooseflesh, she considered tucking her nose into the warm dip of Tommy’s neck.

But the seventh chime echoed throughout the otherwise silent house, and even though she could sense that the sunlight had yet to sneak through the heavy velvet curtains, Brigid was out of time. Seven o’clock was her final warning, no matter Tommy’s seductive warmth and the steady feel of his heart against her ribcage. 

Sighing, Brigid savored the last bit of darkness behind her eyelids before shifting her weight to the edge of his bed. The draft sneaking in through the poorly insulated window swept across her shoulder, and her bare feet recoiled on the scuffed wood. 

_Stockings? _She searched the room with bleary eyes to discover them in a limp and wrinkled pile by the wardrobe. An amused smile quirked on her lips. They had covered an impressive distance after Tommy’s burning fingers stripped them from her, but in the soft light of morning, it seemed an impossible span to cross on bare feet. Her teeth chattered as she considered it.

“Stay.”

It was rough with sleep, gravelly and low in the morning quiet, and he slipped a chilled arm around her belly from behind as he moved closer. She could feel the soft brush of his lips at her hip, sending a different kind of shiver through her.

Brigid’s hand fell to his soft hair. “Can’t.”

“Cruel woman.” But his lips curved against her pebbled skin, tracing what must have been a smile.

They had spent an entire evening joined together in every way that man and woman could be — hot, open-mouthed kisses broken up by breathless laughter, dragging hands and scratching nails, whispering nothing and everything into each other’s skin.

Brigid loathed to ruin the memory, and so decided not to remind Tommy that until he wed her, it would be quite unseemly for her to be caught in his bed past daybreak.

After all, she had to cross three lanes and two blocks back to her own home before the sun could stretch down the street and catch her out. She had just forty-five minutes before her father would stumble, tired and ashen after third shift, through the front door and expect a steaming cuppa to be waiting for him.

So instead, she reached for the abandoned quilt and tossed it up and over him. “Not as cruel as this chill. Get Lovelock to reseal that window, would you?”

“Go, then.” He didn’t have the wherewithal, as early as it was, to put true disdain in his voice, and instead came off as little better than a petulant child. “Run back to your own bed before da figures out where his girl has been all night.”

Affection at his teasing welled in her chest and brought a smile to her face, but as he rolled away, it wasn’t warm enough to fight the wintry bedroom. She dashed across the room on light feet — Polly was too perceptive not to know that Brigid had been sleeping under her roof, but Brigid still wasn’t keen to wake the older woman — and pulled up her stockings with stiff fingers. Brigid dressed in the dim light by muscle memory alone, her puffy eyes still drooping with sleep. Though she would have liked to keep her mess of curls down for added warmth, she took care to arrange them into a neat chignon in Tommy’s dusty mirror.

Small Heath was full of busybodies, after all, and if an early riser heard her heels clicking on the cobblestones and decided to peek through the drapes, she refused to look as if she’d just had a man’s fingers in her hair.

Finally, she pulled on her coat, her cold hands slipping into the ermine-lined pockets on instinct, and gave the room a last look for anything she had missed. She had thought Tommy would have fallen back asleep, but instead, she found his eyes open and watching her, his hands resting behind his head. The plains of his face were smooth and untroubled, his eyes tracing her in that soft way he seemed to allow only when they were alone. With his hair mussed, he looked more innocent, flushed with life and bright with the promise of manhood, than any veteran bookmaker and soldier had right to.

The thought hardened in Brigid’s throat — in the dim light, he could have been the Tommy that used to appear at her door in the early morning, wondering if she’d like to go for a ride in the country with him. So much time had passed since those early days, and yet when he looked at her like that, she felt seventeen again.

Though she stood beside the door, Brigid crossed the room back to him. His lips parted, pliant and full, beneath hers with a familiarity that still, two months since his return to civilian life, seemed to evade them more often than not. She couldn’t help but curl a hand around the nape of his neck, fingers slipping into the close-shorn hair at the back of his head.

“Go on.” He broke the kiss to trace a callused thumb across her cheekbone. “Tell James I said hello.”

Brigid pressed a final kiss to the corner of his mouth, thankful for the laugh that bubbled up past her lips. Intimacy came so easy to them during the warm night, but it felt so heavy in the cold day.

“I certainly won’t,” she whispered, pulling away to return to the door. The silence stretched between them, and she busied her tingling hands with pulling on her matching gloves.

She could still remember the grip of his hands at her waist, the feel of his teeth against her skin. Almost too casual, she said, “He hates the night shift, you know.”

It was a familiar refrain, one that Brigid had slipped into conversation before. Though a return to first shift would put a damper on her nightly rendezvouses with Tommy, her father would be ever thankful for a full night’s sleep, and Brigid hated seeing him so downtrodden.

“It can pay to have someone loyal on the night shift, love.”

A familiar response — indicative and equally vague, as Tommy so often was. With no time to press her point, she gave him one last smile and kept the knob turned, muffled, as she shut the door behind her, dodging the creaky steps on her way down. 

When Brigid stole out the front door, the sun had begun to paint the navy sky golden along the horizon, but the stars still winked above. February had been blustery — strong winds had swept indiscriminately down the lanes, snatched washing from the lines and stirred shop signs, a creaking that melded with the distant factory clamor to create a unique sort of orchestra — and this morning was no different. The chill crept underneath her coat, through the thick wool of her stockings, and would have made Brigid hurry even without the threat of her father returning home before her.

The city was beginning to stir, a change marked by the first lamps lit in the front parlors, the fresh smoke rising from chimney after chimney. If the rain hanging in heavy, slate-grey clouds could hold, no doubt laundry would be strung up across the empty lines soon. Brigid had their washing to tend to as well, but she would have only enough time to cook the morning meal before she was due back at the betting shop. With Kempton upcoming, they were expecting a marked increase in bets, and hopefully even a long-term upswing to bring them out of the slow winter season.

As the factory bell released tired droves of soot-blackened men back to their homes and wives, Brigid turned the corner toward her house. The windows of the quaint house she shared with her father were blessedly still dark, the curtains drawn tight. It seemed the first-shift foreman had not relieved him early.

_Perfect_.

Still, she shot a skittish look down the lane as she dashed across to her door. And not for the first time during a harried walk home, Brigid felt that she was getting too old for this. Tommy had said, just weeks ago, that he wasn’t ready, that he needed more time, that he wouldn’t marry her until he had a legal betting license to his name. She intended to bide her time, willing to wait for him, but nevertheless, it weighed heavy on her heart.

But it was time — had _been_ time — for her and Tommy to share their own home. 

* * *

By the time Brigid returned to the kitchen in a laced blouse and long woolen skirt, black hair freshly coiled, the kettle was whistling and the post sat piled on the mat. She stooped to collect it, finding only the morning paper and a heavy parchment envelope postmarked from Belfast with her Uncle Peter’s address in the top corner. 

They hadn’t heard from their family since the holiday, and curiosity tugged in her mind. Her fingers itched to slip under the seal, but the letter was addressed to her father, so Brigid placed it at the head of the table next to his teacup.

Her father arrived as she pulled a rasher of bacon from the icebox, accompanied by the wind slamming the door behind him and the twin thumps of the heavy work boots he deposited underneath the coat rack. 

“Morning, da,” she called. “Paper’s already here.”

He approached from behind as she arranged the sliced bacon in a deep iron pan, adjusting the flame, and pressed a quick kiss to her temple, just as he had done which she was no more than a slip of a girl with twin plaits down her back. His lips were cold, as were the large hands he cupped around her shoulders, but Brigid felt a curl of warmth in her chest.

“Mornin’, dear.” His voice was gritty with exhaustion, rough from eight hours of smoke and hot coals and bellowing to keep men in line.

She quirked a smile, meeting his tired gaze before he dropped into his chair at their scrubbed old table. A callused hand scrubbed across his face, and his shoulders sagged with a sigh in the soft morning light.

At the sight, she turned fully from the hob to face him. “Are you feeling well?”

“Oh, I’m fine.” He dismissed her concern with a wave of his hand, but he didn’t quite manage to smooth his furrowed brow. “What about you? Were you warm enough last night?”

Their old, rusty radiator had given out last week, plunging the house to icy temperatures, and it had taken days to get a repairman out from Birmingham proper after their neighbor and no less than four Peaky boys not willing to admit defeat had a go at it. Lest she caught her death, she truly had spent the night with the Shelbys then, curled up on a spare cot in Ada’s bedroom — or so her father thought.

Heat rushed to her face, inspiring Brigid to turn back to the bacon that now popped in the pan. “Positively toasty.”

It wasn’t a lie, so to speak, if perhaps not the whole truth. Tommy _did_ run hot.

She used a spatula to turn the bacon, and then busied herself with a loaf of bread, slicing it to fry in the hot grease after the bacon finished. “There’s a letter from Peter and Ellen,” she said. “Do open it before I die of curiosity.”

Her father’s sister, Brigid’s Auntie Ellen, was known for two things: being long-winded, and treating every piece of news as if it were the shiniest bit in her gossip cabinet. 

His laugh was low under the sizzling hob, and they fell into a contented silence as her father unfolded the letter and slurped at his tea. Brigid replaced the bacon in the pan with thick slices of bread, just ten seconds on each side until it was crispy (and not nearly-stale). By the time he tossed the heavy parchment back to the table, Brigid had fried up five eggs, three for him and two for herself, and neatly arranged their two sandwiches on matching porcelain plates.

They had never used the porcelain when her mother was alive apart for holidays and occasions, but the thin, curling blue vines around the edges of the plates had always reminded Brigid of her mother, and so she tried to pull them out every day.

“What’s the news?” Setting his plate down, Brigid settled across from him with her own. “Is everyone healthy?”

“It would appear so,” he said, taking a fork to his sandwich. “Apparently Julia has found a beau and he’s already asked for her hand, but they think she’s still too young. Jack’s found a new job. Jimmy and his wife are expecting another sometime this summer.”

A smile tugged at Brigid’s lips. She’d never met her oldest cousin’s two young children — they hadn’t even been to Belfast since before the war, of course — but they’d received a photo with the annual Christmas card of two beaming, flaxen-haired cherubs, the older boy holding up his swaddled sister for the camera. It had reminded her so immediately of an old, faded portrait of her and Patrick that it took her breath away.

“That’s lovely. Perhaps we could visit in the autumn to meet the new babe, as well as the others?”

“Perhaps.” It fell flat, punctuated by the bite of bacon and bread, dripping in egg, that he shoved in his mouth without looking up.

He folded the letter, his brow furrowed, and tucked it in the pocket of his work shirt before she could ask to read it, and he still looked far away in the eyes. Though he’d attempted to wash his face, dark lines of soot still traced down his neck and shadowed the discontent on his face.

Brigid fiddled with her food.“Are you sure you’re all right, da?”

Each morning since he switched to third shift, her father had done little else apart from complain about being on third shift. Brigid could hardly blame him. Hours spent at the B.S.A. were hours spent sweating in the blazing heat, deafened by the constant clamor. The environment was insufferable even when the sun was high in the sky. Truly, the only perk he had yet to relay was that the Communist agitators — dynamic Freddie Thorne and his band of unionists — preferred, in a rare display of common sense, to agitate at midday.

And so the near-silence was troublesome.

“Oh, I’m fine, love.” Eyes down, he heaved a deep sigh. “Just a little behind schedule and workin’ hard, is all.”

She hummed, swallowing the last bite of her sandwich, but the chiming clock prevented her from pressing him any further. “As am I, it happens.” She stood, placing the fragile plate in the sink basin. “I need to get to the shop — Kempton’s up next week.”

If her father minded the depth to which she had become involved with the Peaky Blinders and their business while he was away at war, he had yet to express it — though, he didn’t often express anything of much importance any more. The War had resigned him to isolation and silence as it had so many of the others. It had invited a heavy, oppressive silence into their lives, an unwelcome guest around the parlor fire and the supper table in the spot that Patrick and his charm had occupied for so long.

“Will you be here for supper?”

The question punctured her heart, and she leaned down to press a kiss to his temple, just as he had done to her when he arrived. “No, I’ll be working at Thompson’s through the evening.”

Resigned, he nodded. “I love you, dear.”

Brigid’s hand fell gently to his shoulder. “Love you too, da.”

As she dashed to the front door, Brigid reflected on what Tommy had said that morning — that having a loyal man on the night shift could pay dividends — and decided that having a well-rested father was more important.

* * *

Small Heath was no stranger to smoke and ash, but that evening, it hung heavy in the air. The damp was acrid on her tongue, and Brigid coughed into the fur of her coat in an attempt to clear her throat, though she knew the reprieve would hardly last. Both the Austen and the B.S.A. lined her route to Watery Lane, and the smog clung so heavily to those four blocks that women couldn’t wear their white dresses unless it was just after a heavy rain.

But her stomach was begging for dinner, and so she picked up her pace. Mrs. Thompson had tasked her to inventory their extensive thread offerings before she left, and the undertaking had kept her past closing, made her quite ravenous, and left her barely able to tell the difference between slate, nickel, and marengo — eventually, all greys started to look the same, especially once the sun sunk below the horizon.

Ahead, a pair of coppers manned the cobbled street corner under a gas lamp, easily spotted — one exhaled a large plume of tobacco smoke, while the end of the other’s cigarette bloomed bright in the dark night. Both wore their caps low, evading recognition. Unease pricked the back of Brigid’s neck, urging her to step off the pavement and cross the street. 

She never usually passed coppers on her return from Thompson’s, and in Birmingham, increased police presence was often cause for concern rather than lowered guard. Careful to maintain her speed, Brigid kept her face down.

“_Oi_ — boy!” Sharp, commanding, the directive could have only come from the pair.

But curiosity got the better of her. From under the brim of her hat, Brigid watched as one of them clapped a hand onto the back of a slight boy of perhaps ten, clad in a threadbare overcoat too large for him and a Peaky cap.

The boy shrugged the first copper off, only to be grabbed by the other. “Let _go_ of me!” he protested, and Brigid sighed in disapproval.

“Finn!” Her voice cut through the gloom, echoing off the three-storied, black-bricked terraced houses that lined the street.

The tussle stopped as all three turned to watch her approach, and Brigid clucked her tongue. Raising her hat so the coppers could see her face, she smiled. This close, their golden nameplates glinted in the lamplight, emblazoned with names she did not recognize.

“Mum’s told you not to run, Finn — I apologize for my brother, officers.”

“He belong to you?” The thinner one leered at her, beady eyes dragging up and back down, but she straightened her spine, unwilling to cow to him.

“Yes. My younger brother, as I said,” she replied, crisp, brooking no argument as she turned her gaze down to Finn. “What are you doing running about?”

He jerked his arm from the fat copper’s grip, and at only ten, he was unable to hide the dirty look he threw the copper’s way. “You’re late. _Mum_ got worried.”

His brow had furrowed with her ruse, but he was smart enough to not throw it away. 

She sighed with well-practiced concern. “Yes, Auntie Ellen needed more help with the babes than anticipated.” Fluttering her lashes, she gave the fat copper a much kinder gaze than Finn’s. “Our aunt’s just had twins, you see. I was helping her put them down, but one of them’s colicky — ”

“Yeah, yeah,” the thinner one cut her off, his mouth twisting into a frown. He shooed them away. “Get on — and make sure _he_ behaves.”

Finn took the gloved hand she extended to him without prompting, and with the other, she tipped her hat to the coppers. “Of course. Have a good evening, officers.”

The pair offered no farewell of their own, and so Brigid coaxed Finn alongside her, his hand gripped in hers. Their eyes felt heavy on her back, and she fought every instinct to turn, to cross the street, to speed up. They made it a full block before she let Finn pull away from her with a disgruntled sigh.

“You know better than to fight coppers, Finn,” she said, attempting to hide a smile that he might mistake as approval.

He snorted, still smarting from the copper’s reprimand in the way only a proud ten year old could. “They should know better than to — ”

“They weren’t ours,” Brigid interrupted him, recalling their nameplates. “I look at the payroll every week. They aren’t on it.”

Taking in the information, Finn reached up to straighten his cap. It was still without the trademark razor blades that would have revealed him instantly to the coppers. “Then you should be careful. They don’t usually patrol down this way.”

This time, she couldn’t stop her smile. “You’re right, they don’t. Have you heard why they might be out?” 

He brightened. “Arthur’s called a family meeting — that’s why I was coming your way in the first place! Reckon he might know something.”

“Well, then, we better get on,” she said as she picked up her pace, and Finn skipped to keep up with her.

They passed by the clanging Austen, the ringing B.S.A., and finally were in sight of Watery Lane, where every lamp was lit in the windows of Number Six. A fat, hot raindrop landed on her cheek, and Brigid urged Finn ahead of her to the front door, which he swung open with little fanfare.

Though he didn’t stop to relieve himself of his coat and cap, Brigid paused to hang hers neatly on the rack, followed by her hat, its navy velvet spotted with rain. No hook was bare — Polly’s fur and Ada’s silk joined a whole shop’s worth of black woolen coats, and so she tucked it over the pressed one she knew to be Tommy’s.

Voices and heavy footfalls echoed throughout the house, but as she crossed the dim parlor to the kitchen, Brigid found the table empty, its chairs kicked back haphazardly. Three ham sandwich halves left amid the crumbs on a burnished silver platter were all that remained of supper, but she was nonetheless grateful.

“_Finn, bugger off_,” Arthur was scolding from the betting shop, his voice slurred around a flask.

Brigid swept the sandwiches onto a china plate from the cupboard, and she couldn’t help but laugh as she passed Finn on her way into the smoky betting shop, the put-out boy following his brother’s command with a practiced sigh. The shop, filled to the brim with black-clad Peaky Blinders, stretched across the main floors of Numbers Four and Five Watery Lane, haphazard, cramped, and dim. It was littered with old betting slips and cuttings from the _Birmingham Evening Dispatch_, rickety chairs and smudged crystal ashtrays — and all of it, no matter how hard Brigid tried, remained covered in a thin layer of chalk dust.

“Shut the door.” Polly sat at the table they had gathered around, dignified, and held her magnifying glass to the evening paper in front of her without sparing a glance.

“Not fair,” Finn whined.

But Brigid did as she was told, balancing the plate in one hand as she nudged the dark green, chipped double doors with her hip. Through the crack, she winked at Finn, careful to school her face before turning to the rest of the Shelbys and Peaky boys.

Her eyes came first, as they always did, to Tommy, leaned forward, hands braced atop the back of the only empty chair at the table. He stood tall between Polly and Ada, who was becoming an unreliable attendee, her laced ivory gown a sharp contrast to the harshly tailored suits of her brothers and the exposed brick walls.

When Brigid paused, shifting in front of the door, Tommy met her eyes.

He pulled out the chair, and the scratch against the floorboards cut through the quiet. “Now that we’re all here — Arthur?”

Brigid hurried forward, slipped between Lovelock and one of his sons, and took her seat as Arthur cleared his throat. Tommy pushed her chair in, ever the gentlemen, but was careful to not touch her as he drew his hands away. When she turned over her shoulder to whisper her gratitude, he had already leaned against an exposed, weight-bearing wooden beam, the gas lamplight flickering in the hollows of his cheekbones. He inclined his head only briefly, but a warmth welled in Brigid’s chest nonetheless.

It was good to know that even with the men back from war, she was still considered to be family, to be an integral part of the Shelby business.

“Arthur?” Tommy’s voice held more finality this time, as if it were a final warning. Though Arthur, as the eldest brother and the one who had called the meeting, held authority, these days it only ever seemed to be with Tommy’s permission.

“Right,” Arthur said, dropping his tin flask to the table with the finality of a judge’s gavel. “I’ve called this family meeting because I’ve got some very important news. Scudboat and Lovelock got back from Belfast last night — they were buying a stallion to cover their mares.”

Through a bite of her first ham sandwich, Brigid smiled at Scudboat. At her behest, he had checked in on her Belfast family and relayed first thing that morning that they were in good health. After the rough months they had been through, it was nice to know that the positive sentiment Auntie Ellen had implied in her letter seemed to be the truth.

Scudboat’s dark eyes met hers, and he winked.

“They were in a pub on the Shankhill Road yesterday,” Arthur continued. He moved forward, collecting a stack of leaflets tossed on the table in front of him. “And in that pub, there was a copper handing out these.”

Arthur handed the leaflets to Lovelock, who began to pass them around to all those assembled. Brigid knew from experience that approximately a third of the men couldn’t read, but they each took one nonetheless, unwilling to contradict Arthur.

John, ever impatient, ripped Ada’s from her hands to observe it with furrowed brows. As Brigid acquired one of her own and began to skim, he recited the bolded text at the top. “_If you’re over five feet and can fight, come to Birmingham_.”

“They’re recruiting Protestant Irishmen to come over here as Specials.”

Arthur had crossed his arms and taken a deep breath, his voice booming with revelation, echoing around in the crowded front room of the shop, but Brigid’s focus was sharp on the notice in front of her. Something like dread, like familiarity, twisted in her stomach. As she smoothed the leaflet down beside her plate, the paper rustled under her shaking hands.

“To do what?” Ada interjected, soft and confused, for once breaking her own, new-found rule about staying out of Peaky business.

Her heart racing, and before Arthur or any of the others could answer, the words tumbled out, heavy on her tongue. “To clean up the city.”

_Brother, we are at a loss. We don’t know where to turn or what to do,_ her Auntie Ellen had written.

The letter had failed to make it to her father in France, so the Army instead forwarded to his Birmingham address. Brigid had opened it with shaking fingers, sick with dread, fearing that the moment had finally come — Jimmy or Jack had been drafted, she was sure.

Instead, the letter read, _We haven’t seen Joseph in three weeks, and the police won’t even open a file! That damned Chief Inspector Campbell says he probably ran off, or is drunk in a ditch somewhere, but Joe would never do that. These policemen just don’t trust honest Catholics anymore…_

But Arthur bristled as if she had stolen his thunder, his hazy eyes focusing on her with something like jealousy. “And how do you know so bloody much?”

Her cousin had been nineteen at the time, quick to laugh and quicker to talk, and he never did turn back up.

As she came to, a tickle ran down Brigid’s spine and raised the hairs on her neck. She felt as if she were being watched, and she was, of course — the floor creaked under Tommy as he shifted his weight.

“Because he’s been cleaning the I.R.A. out of Belfast for years.” She steadied her trembling fingers around the damp, icy glass of the stout John had poured her, before continuing. “And he killed my cousin while he was there.”


	2. ii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello hello!
> 
> an admin thing: right now through the end of november, posts will be every other week. that's because this is going to be my nanowrimo project this year! i'm so excited, since this will be the first time i've attempted nano with fanfic - if you have any tips, leave them below! after november, i hope to get to a weekly update, since i should have many more words to play with :)
> 
> so excited to share this next chapter with y'all - i hope you like it! all of the comments and kudos on the first have just thrilled me, so please tell me what you think!

After Brigid’s admission, silence fell in the shop that so rarely welcomed it, leaving Polly’s soft exhale and the shuffling of Finn’s feet on the other side of the double doors audible. Just that morning, Scudboat had told Brigid that her Belfast family looked well when he dropped in, but the connection left her feeling cold despite the warm, dusty air.

Inspector Campbell’s name on the leaflet seemed too eerie to be a coincidence.

John swore, his boots falling heavy onto the floor. “Your cousin was I.R.A.?”

“No,” she snapped, her mind jumbled with memories of her younger cousin, his bright red hair and infectious grin. She had first known him as a boy, as old as Tommy had been the first time she bloodied her knees on the Small Heath cobblestones and he’d helped her up with a strong hand.

“Joe was — _young_ and stupid. He never knew when to shut his mouth, but he wasn’t I.R.A.” Seeking Tommy’s eyes, she turned. “Why are they sending the Inspector to Birmingham?”

She hoped that he would have the answers, that he could say something to immediately dissuade her fears. But his eyes were guarded, the ice there muddled and foggy. He watched her carefully and weighed his words even more so.

“There’s been all these bloody strikes at the B.S.A. and the Austen Works lately, and now the papers are talking about sedition and revolution.” He may have projected confidence, but his eyes belied his certain tone to her as he addressed the family at large. “I reckon it’s the communists he’s after.”

“So this copper,” Polly said, lowering her magnifying glass to level Tommy with a weighted stare, “he’s gonna leave us alone, right?”

“Most of the Irish in Green Lanes left Belfast to get away from him.” Without intending to, she had once again drawn the attention back to herself, and Polly’s dark eyes shone like coins in the lamplight. “Catholics who cross him in the night disappear, and they never seem to turn back up.”

Brigid sounded bitter even to her own ears, and she again tried to drink the taste of bile out of her mouth. The stout was heady, churning in her empty stomach, and left her neck and cheeks burning in the boiling, cramped shop.

“Well, we ain’t IRA — we _fought_ for the bloody king.” His voice muffled around his toothpick, John leaned forward, elbows to his knees, and looked a true gangster with his razored cap low over his eyes. “And anyway, we’re Peaky Blinders. We’re not scared of coppers — ”

Arthur nodded, mustache bristling. “Right — ”

“If they come for us, we’ll cut ‘em a smile each.”

“The coppers in Belfast don’t care whether you fought for the king,” Brigid snapped at him, her beer sloshing dangerously close to Polly’s typewriter as she slammed it down.

An agitation had risen in her chest, heart clamoring heavy against her ribcage, and she found herself, not for the first time, frustrated with the soldiers who had replaced the brothers she had loved so much. They’d always been reckless. They’d always had chips on their shoulders and targets on their backs.

But they had never been stupid.

She continued, her breath rattling in her ears. “Those Proddy bastards cut first, and they cut deep.”

Many of the men with whom her father drank in the Black Swan Inn had sons or nephews, cousins or brothers, who had gone missing in Belfast. He would come home with stories — bodies washed up in the river, blood left on the pavement, wailing widows and mournful mothers left in the wake — and sigh into his evening tea as he tightened the laces of his work boots. _There’s no more room for republicans in Ireland, _he’d said once. _This Inspector is making that quite clear._

She had pricked herself over her mending, thankful that the dark wool in her hands would mask it. _Then it’s a good thing we’re not republicans._

“Keep talking like that and we’ll pass quite well for I.R.A., thank you.” Polly’s voice was snide as she pushed Brigid’s beer across the table and away from her paper.

But the humor was lost on Brigid. Cheeks burning, she chewed on the inside of her lip to prevent herself from saying any more.

They had been too careless since the men had returned, swaggering around town and playing fast with money and whiskey, cutting a few too many people. It wouldn’t matter how many coppers Tommy had on the payroll once Campbell started sniffing — the Cut was black enough to hide any bodies he dumped there.

“Arthur, is that it?” The sound of his boots startled Brigid out of her reverie as Tommy took a step forward into her line of vision, his eyebrows raised expectantly.

Though he had been handed back the meeting’s authority, Arthur paused. His eyes slid from Tommy, down to Brigid herself, and finally over to the matriarch of the family. “What d’you think, Aunt Pol?”

“This family does everything open,” she said. “You have nothing else to say to this meeting, Thomas?”

Pursing his lips, Tommy gave a single shake of his head. “No. Nothing that’s women’s business.”

Brigid couldn't hold in her dark laugh. Nearly five years had passed, and between Polly, Ada, Martha, and herself, they’d kept the doors open, the coins flowing, and food on the table of Number Six.

“This whole bloody enterprise was women’s business while you boys were away at war.” Polly raised her brows in a challenge, and the edge of control that she’d begun to cede to her nephews reared its fierce head once more. “What’s changed?”

Shaking his head, Tommy lifted a cigarette to his lips. “We came back.”

Yes, they came back to Small Heath — Brigid had wept hot tears on the train platform when she met them, had never felt a greater anxious, shuddering relief in her life.

But what had followed them here?

* * *

To calm her nerves, Brigid busied herself at the Shelbys’ looted upright piano, plucking out an old, mournful Irish tune. It was one her mother had taught her, a simple melody in a simple key, and one of the first Brigid could remember learning. It was meant as a duet —she’d first practiced it with Patrick fidgeting by her side. At six, Brigid had wanted nothing more than to please her mother despite her unrhythmic fingers, and at ten, Patrick, the truly intuitive player of the family, had wanted nothing more than to bolt.

And so when she reached the point where the partner was meant to join, she looped back to the beginning, and if anyone noticed, they didn’t mention it.

The familiar rhythm, though it lulled her into a sort of trance, did little to slow her thoughts. Inspector Campbell was coming to Birmingham, and they were none the wiser as to why. Brigid was inclined to believe Polly and her suggestive tone — Tommy certainly knew more than he was making public. And he might have claimed it was not women’s business, but he had not shared the information with his brothers either, if Arthur’s agitation was anything to go by. He’d been distant lately, captured by his thoughts in a way that had become, blessedly, less common since he’d opened up to her that foggy morning by the Cut — 

“You should get home. James is due in soon.”

Brigid startled, and the ivory keys plunked discordantly under her fingers.

Behind her, Tommy leaned against the doorjamb, the cut of him dark and tailored against the soft orange light of the parlor, his arms crossed as he considered her. She could never grasp how he managed to look as fresh at the end of the day as he did in the morning — after a long morning pushing coins in the betting shop and an even longer evening pricking her fingers and counting threads, Brigid felt heavy and unkempt, her hair sagging with pins and the intermittent rain.

Before she could respond, the grandfather clock tolled the late hour. “Suppose so,” she finally said, a deep sigh escaping her lips. Her back and knees protesting, she rose from the piano.

He followed her like a black shadow to the front entry, helping her into her coat without prompting. These days, he rarely walked her home — she was lucky if he saw her to the door, and so she paused, expecting him to take his leave. Her throat was tight, uncertain, a tension making its home in the slopes of her shoulders.

But he donned his own coat, tucked his cap into place, and proffered his arm. She flushed, folding herself close into his side.

Watery Lane welcomed them with a short gust of wind that ruffled the ermine at her cheeks. The cobblestones shone black in the night, gleaming like oil on water, and she had to navigate carefully to keep up with him and avoid tripping. The street was thankfully empty of any glinting badges or curious eyes, of an imposing Irishman with the devil in his soul.

Glancing up at Tommy, Brigid hoped to find a hint of what churned underneath the impassive surface of his face — instead, she found it still enough to reflect her worries back to her. The uneasy silence skulking between them was as thick as the factory smoke, and Brigid knew not how to cut it.

Instead, Auntie Ellen’s letter looped through her mind — Campbell’s hatred republicans and Catholics, his self-righteousness, his blatant lack of care for her family’s pain. How could Tommy hope to protect them from a man who worked and lurked in darkness? What reason would the Inspector pick to target the Shelbys — the betting and patronage? Polly’s rosaries and Black Madonna locket? The booze and cigarettes? The razors in their caps?

As if he could read her troubled thoughts, Tommy slowed down, pulling her closer to the black-brick homes and out of the moonlit street. “What else do you know of this Inspector?” he said, his voice quiet. “What of your cousin?”

Brigid swallowed the hard lump in her throat, the cold night air burning her lungs. Of course, he didn’t know. Tommy had been in France for over two years by the time Ellen’s fateful letter ended up on her doorstep in Small Heath. _Are you mad?_ Polly had caught her drafting a tearful note to her father with the news, and the older woman’s fingernails had dug maroon half-moons into the skin of her wrist. _You write a letter claiming the Chief Inspector murdered your cousin and the British Army’ll string you up like a puppet._

“Three of Joe’s mates saw him lifted by coppers the night he disappeared, but the Inspector wouldn’t open an official report — said he must have run off. Then one of them went missing too, and he never turned up either.” Brigid met Tommy’s pale eyes and found him watching her carefully. “That seems to have been his method — snatching men up on their way home from pubs, and only the Lord knows what he did with them then. Ellen says he’s cruel.”

As if of its own accord, her hand rose to cross herself. The Shelby brothers might have lost their reverence in France, and Polly might have held more faith in ghosts and dreams, but Brigid had learned her prayers at Eleanor Murphy’s elbow, had cut her knobbly knees on the marbled floor of St. Michael’s from the time she could walk, and could only hope that her cousin, wherever he was, was resting in peace.

Tommy nodded, and his exhale clouded the air in front of him. “And you’re sure your cousin wasn’t I.R.A.?”

“Of _course_, I am!” She scoffed and pulled away, letting the cold February air chase away the ghost of him against her. Crossing her arms over her chest, Brigid determined to keep herself warm. “He was only nineteen, and Ellen keeps her boys on a short lead. He — ” She paused, pursing her lips. “Joe always talked big, but he was harmless.”

Despite her visible irritation, Tommy wrapped an arm around her shoulders and tugged her close to him once more. It was insistent, almost careless, like when they used to stumble together out of the Garrison, whiskey drunk and flushed hot from dancing, and he didn’t want to admit that he needed her help to stay standing. Now, his walk was steady, his boots clicking against the cobblestones, and it was Brigid who rested against him.

“I’ll tell the boys to be careful at night.”

She didn’t _want_ to fight him. He meant well, even if the war had left him uncouth, and the surest cure to the acrid taste of fear in her mouth had always been his lips.

Brigid tucked her nose into the warm curve of his throat, feeling his Adam’s apple bob with a swallow. “You said he wouldn’t bother us.”

Tommy’s grip tightened as they slowed to a stop. They had reached her home — smoke curled from its chimney, and though the curtains were drawn, the oil lamp still burned in the front window. She sighed, not yet ready to depart.

“You said he doesn’t care whether we’re I.R.A. or not.”

His retort brought a laugh to her lips, and she muffled it by pressing them to the warm slope of his neck. The low hum in his throat vibrated against her lips, his cold hand nudging her up to meet his mouth. Despite the empty street, she felt watched as she curled her fingers into the front of his coat.

Her lips had barely parted underneath his before he broke away. “Do you still have your switchblade?”

Heat rose to her cheeks at the mention of the slim, varnished weapon. It hadn’t turned up in her bag in weeks, perhaps not since she had pulled it on him the night he appeared like the crack of a gunshot on the doorstep of Thompson’s to accompany her home. Frowning, Brigid backed away so that she had full access to her bag and its seemingly endless contents, and Tommy watched, unimpressed.

After a long moment, Brigid finally emerged victorious, presenting the blade on her open palm, only to find that he had pulled out a similar one from his coat. “Put that away,” she swore, flicking her own open to test and then snapping it closed. “I’ve got it.”

Rolling his eyes, he slipped the replacement blade back into his coat. “Keep that on _you_ — not in your bag. Where you can get to it before someone can get to you.”

“I know how to take care of myself, Thomas — ”

“Aye, you do,” he said, too soft in the quiet evening, his eyes bright and on her. His broad hands came to her slim waist, thumbs resting under her ribcage. “But there are new coppers coming into town, and they’re all going to be interested in you when they see you sneaking home from my bed.”

Ignoring her frown, he tugged her close again, the space between them just wide enough for a breath. When she met his eyes, Brigid could see he did not mean it as a jape, even if it brought an embarrassed heat to her face. “_Please_, Bridie — be careful.”

The earnestness of it weighed heavily on her chest, welled up emotions in her throat that were almost too big to speak. A dark shadow seemed to loom behind him in the night, creeping ever closer.

“Tommy,” she whispered, her hands at his lapels, “love, you must be careful, too. Campbell won’t be bought, or bargained with.”

He shook his head, lashes fluttering on his high cheeks as he cast his gaze down. “There’s no reason to think we’ll need to — ”

“_Don’t_ lie — you’re always thinking.” She leveled him with a hard stare, just as he had her not moments before. “These Irish coppers… Shall I write to Ellen? She could tell us more about him, about what to expect.”

“No.”

“But I could help — ”

“I don’t need your help.” And before the hot irritation could spill from her lips, he continued, his knuckle nudging her chin. “I need you to stay safe.”

Brigid gaped just once before her lips pursed, something like embarrassment slinking down her spine, causing her to duck her head.

He had never done anything but keep her safe — even when she’d been naive and too brash for her own good, when she would sneak away from her mother in skirts with fallen hems that she had dreaded to mend to follow him and Patrick. Tommy had always been the one to catch her by the arm before any fighting broke out, to send her home with a wink and a promise to not tell her mum.

He _would_ keep them safe.

“I promise I won’t meddle,” she whispered into his mouth, the words clumsy. “But please, don’t shut me out. I can’t stand it — ”

When Tommy met her lips in another kiss, she slipped her cold fingers through his coat, fisting into the warm wool of his waistcoat, pressing against the hard planes of his chest. Brigid pulled him flush against her and got more than she bargained for — surefooted Tommy slipped on a slick cobblestone, forced to catch himself on the wall of the house behind her. She couldn’t help but laugh into his open-mouthed kiss, couldn’t bring herself to regret it now that every inch of him was flush against her. His beating heart pounding against her own, he let his hand wander down the small of her back. The knee that slipped between her legs drove a delicious warmth up her neck and to her cheeks, and blood rushed in her ears, keeping time with the clanging factories in the distance. Her lip stung where he bit it, her hair catching on the brick behind her.

But he pulled away, placating her with chaste kisses to the corner of her mouth, her cheekbone, her temple, while she gasped into his throat, her skin burning where he still held her against him.

They stayed close until their breathing had slowed, until the acute desire in her belly began to fade, and then Brigid said, “Should I come over later?”

“No,” he breathed, barely audible. “I’ve business tonight.”

Pouting, she turned her face up to his, hopeful that he would catch her swollen lips in another kiss. “No good business happens after midnight, Tommy Shelby.”

He gave in, just for a moment, and responded against her mouth. “Which is why you should stay safe at da’s.”

Brigid finally managed to extract herself from him, taking a full step back and a full breath into her lungs as she neatened her hair, straightened her blouse. She tugged her coat tight around her shoulders, hoping to hide the flush that still burned on her neck, and bid him goodbye with a squeeze to his hand. “You stay safe as well.”

Quickly, he brought their joined hands to his lips to kiss the cold platinum of the ring on her finger, and then, tracing a cigarette across the swollen line of his bottom lip, Tommy waited until she slipped inside. Brigid paused on the other side of the latched door, resting her heated forehead against the cool wood, butterflies and something much darker dueling in her belly.

She wanted to believe that they would be safe.

She wanted to help.

She wanted to _believe_ him.

* * *

When the damp wind swept Brigid inside Number Six Watery Lane, John’s four children nearly toppled her over in the front door, racing barefoot through the parlor, their cold-chapped cheeks flushed from exertion.

“Oi!” Brigid braced against the door, slamming it behind her, and pulled off her cap to shake it after them. “Be _careful_. Aunt Polly has lots of delicate things.”

The only one to acknowledge her was Little John, turning on unsteady feet to flash her a wide grin over his shoulder before disappearing into the kitchen. She shook her head, noting that Tommy’s coat was missing from the rack — did he have early business as well, or had last night carried into the morning?

Sighing, she made to follow the children across the parlor, her bones heavier than usual. When the sun finally peaked over the back garden wall that morning, she had realized she couldn’t recall sleeping — she’d traced every crack and stain in the plaster ceiling, watching the stretch of shadows across the windowsill, and behind her eyelids, she had seen the loop of the Inspector’s signature at the bottom of Arthur’s leaflet.

Polly sat at the kitchen table, holding her teacup steady in its saucer as the children rumbled by, and Brigid helped herself to the pot resting at the center of the table.

“Early morning?” The strong, herbal steam rose to her face, and for a wink of time she felt invigorated until the fatigue crept in once more.

“Too early,” Polly drawled.

“Would you like help cooking something up for the kids?”

But Polly scoffed, waving a hand to the sideboard covered in crumbs and the remains of last week’s bread. “They have already raided the pantry to their satisfaction.”

Slurping at her tea, Brigid turned to sweep the crumbs into the sink basin. She tied up the remains of the hard loaf of brown bread in a tea cloth, a frown twisting her face. Did they not have food in the house? Not a week had passed since her last visit to Number Three, laden with fresh cracked bread; beets and fat onions and potatoes and a full head of cabbage; a cut of salted ham she’d had to carefully weigh before passing coins across the counter to the butcher.

“I’ll stop by the market on my way home.” She sighed, her shoulders already sagging with the weight of a phantom basket.

Polly’s dark, knowing eyes met hers in a level stare over her teacup. “It is not your responsibility to feed John’s children.”

“Someone has to do it.”

“Their father should do it.”

Polly’s gaze, as it was wont to do, crept down Brigid’s spine, and Brigid found that she could not make her heavy tongue explain herself, instead choosing to hide her frown behind another sip of tea.

_Martha_ should have done it, but her dear friend was dead and cold in the ground, and Brigid would not, _could_ not, let the children starve. Her pride was not worth that. Polly’s pride, on the other hand, was a three-headed beast, and two would grow back where one was chopped —

“Bridie?”

The tension swept out of the room like a hard exhale, and Brigid broke Polly’s stare to find Katie peering into the kitchen from the betting shop’s doors. Through them, John was already crouched in front of the board scratching out the day’s odds in the otherwise quiet shop, and the early morning sunlight shone on his leather boots.

“Bridie, could you fix my plaits?” The girl came forward, a heavy sheet of nut-brown hair loose over her shoulder. “The baby pulled out my ribbon.”

Brigid pulled out a chair at the table. “Come here, sweet girl.”

Katie skipped forward, sitting prim and rod-straight so that Brigid could sink her fingers into her hair, finding snarls at the base of her neck. Gently, she began to work through them and pulled the other plait loose, letting all of Katie’s long hair fall free.

“Who plaited your hair this morning, love?”

“Alice!”

Instead of responding, Brigid let her goddaughter’s excited answer echo in the silence, meeting Polly’s gaze over Katie’s head — there was no reason for a seven-year-old to be tasked with dressing her younger sister for the day.

The older woman took a measured sip of her tea.

Casting her eyes downward, Brigid let the rhythm in her fingers take over, admiring the soft honey hues in the thick strands. Martha’s hair had been brown for as long as she had known her — and they’d met in primary school, after all, Mulligan and Murphy placed beside one another at a scratched, rickety desk — but her hair had shone golden on her wedding day under the hot summer sun. No one had commented, of course, on the gentle swell of her belly under the dropped waist of her ivory tea dress, but Brigid had been there when John proposed, had been cradling her best friend against her as she wept and trembled, before John burst through the door and promised to marry her, to be there, to be the kind of father he’d never had.

Brigid’s heart had felt fit to burst that day, but in the dim morning light of Number Six’s kitchen, her heart hurt for a very different reason. The dull, throbbing pain settled in her fatigued muscles. John might have returned home from war and moved his children back into the house he had shared with Martha, but he’d done little else to father his children since.

When he strode into the room, Brigid continued to methodically twist Katie’s hair into a neat plait, the same way her mother had taught her, the same way she used to practice on Martha, and was quite sure that if she looked at him, she would say something too wretched to ever retract.

“Bridie — need you to take this down to the Garrison.”

A fat, sealed envelope shook at the edge of her vision, and truly, she had always been too curious for her own good. Looking up, she regarded the yellowed parchment with raised brows, her lips pursed. It undoubtedly held a stack of banknotes, but when had any of them been authorized to hand out money from the betting shop’s safe without a family vote?

“May I ask why?”

When had John begun to tell her what to do?

They made eye contact just briefly, John’s Shelby blue eyes trailing down to her hands in his daughter’s hair. He appeared to swallow, working at the toothpick propped between his lips.

“Danny Whizz-Bang’s busted up the Garrison again. Tommy told ‘em to send us the bill,” he finally said. He tossed the envelope onto the table in front of her, where it landed with a hefty _thunk_.

Agitation rose hot in her chest, spreading like the bloom of blood from a wound. She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t his runner; that she was meant to be the one keeping track of the money, where it came from and where it went; that the odds he’d been scratching out on the chalkboard weren’t level —

But Danny.

Brigid held a soft spot in her heart for the older man. She’d spent close to a month caring for him as he convalesced in the Birmingham veterans’ hospital after his brush with death at the Somme, after Tommy had hauled them both out from underneath ten tonnes of French dirt, bleeding and caked in mud, when an artillery shell set off the sappers’ bombs before they could escape the tunnel. According to the official record, that was when they’d been shot — clean through, both of them. But where Tommy had convalesced in Paris and been sent back to the front the moment he could level a rifle, it had quickly become clear that something had rattled Danny’s brains.

Brigid swallowed a retort and focused on twisting Katie’s hair in the appropriate direction, untangling the loose ends that had knotted. “I’ll take it when I’m done plaiting your daughter’s hair.”

She shot him a quick look and found him regarding her carefully, and then, without responding, John turned back to the betting shop. She watched him go, her practiced hands tying off Katie’s plait with an emerald velvet ribbon.

“All done.” Brigid pressed a kiss to the crown of the girl’s head and barely managed to pull away before Katie hopped up, a bright _thank you_ on her lips, and ran off to join her siblings in the parlor.

With her left the easy silence, and in its place, tension festered. Brigid slumped forward over the chair to reach her tea, and Polly finally broke the quiet with a slurp of her own.

“You don’t have to listen to him, you know.”

Heaving a deep sigh, Brigid collected the envelope, quickly thumbing through the bills. “Forty pounds, ten shillings.”

John would not have remembered to mark it in the ledger, and so Polly, who knew this as well as she, made a quick note in the margin of her paper.

Nevertheless, Brigid could feel her eyes prickling at her skin, searching, judging. She avoided the stare as she prepared to leave — placing the teacup in the sink basin, slipping the envelope into her skirt pocket, adjusting the neat tuck of her blouse. But when she stepped around Polly’s chair, the older woman’s thin, spindly fingers gripped Brigid’s wrist.

“I meant what I said.”

Brigid did not need that clarification, for Polly rarely said things she didn’t mean. After losing her children, after coming home to Small Heath to care for her brother’s, after years of scrimping and saving and scrapping, she had also learned when to put herself first.

But Brigid had learned quite young that she was better off taking care of others, and she had lost so much — her mother, Martha, and Patrick had taken almost her entire heart with them to their graves — that she decided God would have the rip the rest of them right out of her hands if he wanted them so badly.

Taking one last sip of her tea, she replied, “And I meant what _I_ said — someone has to do it.”

Polly snorted, releasing Brigid’s wrist, and returned to her paper.

Outside, the streets had come alive, bustling with women laden with market baskets, washing baskets, and children. Brigid dodged a leashed dog leading an excited boy and wrapped a hand around the strap of her purse, cognizant of the hefty sum now sitting at the bottom of her bag, which felt heavier than ever.

Her job was to count the money, not to deliver it, and yet here she was. Lips turning into a frown, she kept her head down as she made her way down to Garrison Lane. Perhaps she and Polly had been naive to not acknowledge their wartime control of the business had vanished the moment that Army train pulled into Birmingham’s railway station. Not one of the brothers thought to consult either of them before pulling forty pounds, ten shillings from the safe, and the reality of it churned in her stomach, reminding her that women weren’t supposed to be in charge; that she could not, nonetheless, help the affront she felt.

Yet, approaching the Garrison, Brigid found that the banknotes in her bag were well-deserved. Broken chairs and the splinters of a pub table had been hauled to the curb outside, joining a bin of shattered liquor bottles and pint glasses. Danny’s episodes were becoming more frequent, and she knew that people had started to whisper about the need to commit him, but his wife Rose, like Brigid herself, kept hoping that the old Danny Owen would emerge again one day.

Inside the Garrison proper, the lamps were still snuffed, the oaken floors and leather booths lit only by the sunlight sneaking in through the foggy windows. She found a wide, empty berth in the front of the pub where the brunt of Danny’s tear had been felt, and though Harry had swept the broken glass from the floor, he’d yet to tackle the splintered dent in the front of the bar.

“Hello?” she called, peering behind the empty bar, only half stocked for the day. “Harry?”

There was a long moment of no response, though Brigid heard shuffling and the clinking of glass bottles from the back room. She called out again, and this time, a high, almost sweet voice that definitely didn’t belong to Harry responded.

“We’re closed.” It was a woman, voice lilting with the tenor of her family’s island. “Come back at noon.”

A beautiful woman, golden ringlets arranged delicately around her slim face, appeared through the open doorway, a crate of Irish in hand, and she paused when her gaze met Brigid’s.

“_Dia duit_.” Brigid smiled, remembering her courtesies. “I don’t think we’ve met?”

But the woman only moved forward to heave the tinkling crate up onto the bar top, regarding Brigid with poorly concealed suspicion as she did. Brigid fixed her smile, unsure herself of what to make of the newcomer — for she must have been new to Small Heath to not recognize Brigid, for Brigid to not recognize _her_ after a lifetime of running up and down the muddy streets.

The delicate blouse the woman smoothed into her long grey skirt was embroidered in fine bright colors not often seen in this part of Birmingham, hanging around her waist in neat, tailored lines. Brigid was instantly reminded of the fine tulle dresses and soft, belted cotton tunics that Thompson’s brought in, out-of-season cast-offs from the manufacturing wealthy in the heart of Birmingham, and the pale, lovely girls with rouged cheeks who had once laughed at her and Tommy before the war, the one time they’d ventured to a candle-lit downtown club in their Small Heath finest.

The woman held out a hand across the bar. “_Dia is Muire duit._” Though her accent was true, the words seemed unpracticed on her pink lips. “I’m Grace — Harry’s new barmaid.”

“Pleasure to meet you. I’m Brigid,” she said, taking Grace’s smooth hand in her own. “Are you kin? I’ve heard Harry’s mother was from Galway.”

Reserved, she said, “Not kin, no — just in need of work.”

She began to unload the whiskey, lining it up neatly beside a new stock of Scotch, her movements meticulous. Grace’s deflection was smooth enough, her voice just light enough, that Brigid sensed she should not press for more information. Instead, the barmaid continued. “What about you — you sound English, but you speak Irish?”

“I was born here, but my parents are from Belfast.” Brigid remembered the way her mother would always slip into Irish when irritated, or when she and Brigid’s father would sit late at night by the fire with a shared ginger beer, whispering to avoid waking up Brigid and Patrick. “Mum didn’t want us to forget where we came from, so she tried to teach us — but I was only a half-decent student.”

“It’s becoming less common in the Northern counties,” Grace said, tucking the now-empty crate underneath the bar. “Never learned myself.”

Brigid picked up enough of her mother’s greetings and prayers, her father’s curses and toasts, to hold her own in Irish, but in truth, she’d always preferred to mimic Martha’s rhythmic Brummie accent, eager to fit in with her classmates and the distinctly English neighborhood children.

But now that her mother was long gone, speaking her language was just one of many small ways Brigid tried to stay close to her. “Perhaps I could teach you, though I’ll warn you — I mostly know prayers and curses.”

They shared a laugh, and Grace shrugged, now using a fresh rag to dry off the dripping pint glasses sitting on the back of the bar. “Both are good things to know.”

“Speaking of Harry, though, is he here?”

“No, he’ll be out until we open.” Behind her, the glass bottles glistened in the dim sunlight filtering in from the high windows, casting her in an odd, almost angelic light. “Can I take a message?”

“If you could tell him I have a delivery from Thomas, that would be perfect.” Brigid readjusted her hat to step back out into the cold. “I’ll bring it back ‘round when he’s in.”

As innocent as Grace looked, Brigid had never been a fool — she knew better than to leave an envelope of cash with someone she had just met. Grace would have to learn that trust was not given lightly in Small Heath.

“Does Thomas have a surname?” Grace’s slim brow raised in a question — it would have outed her as a newcomer immediately, even if her accent had not.

“There’s only one Thomas who brings Harry deliveries.”

“Well enough.”

Inclining her head with a smile, Brigid took a step back. “It was lovely to meet you, Grace.”

But in response, Grace pulled two whiskey tumblers from below the bar, clinking together in her hands as she settled them in front of her. “Would you like a drink while I restock? These Englishmen are too stern.”

“That they are.” Brigid laughed, recalling John’s unfeeling swagger, Tommy’s steel-cold countenance. “And I’ve gone and become affianced to one!”

“Thomas?”

Brigid’s smile softened as she turned the ring on her finger, as familiar a gesture as any other. “The one and only.” She considered Grace’s smooth expression, the blue eyes that had observed her fidgeting. “I’ll tell you about him when I next see you.”

“Are you sure you won’t stay? I’d be grateful for more cheerful company.” Grace pushed a tumbler in her direction, even as Brigid shook her head. “We could start our lessons.”

Brigid considered her proposition and the cloudy old crystal, tilting her head just so.

The banknotes were heavy in her bag, it was too early for a drink, and the betting shop was no doubt now crawling with out-of-work veterans and fatigued third-shift workers placing their bets for Kempton. Something in Grace’s insistence crawled up Brigid’s neck, raising the soft hairs there, and so she took a step backward, moving closer to the door.

“I need to get to an appointment, unfortunately, but I’m sure we’ll meet again.” Brigid gave Grace a conciliatory smile. “That’s a beautiful blouse, by the way — the stitching is immaculate.”

“Oh, thank you,” Grace called, glancing down at the embroidery on her collar. “I’ll see you.”

Brigid waved, turning to exit the pub through the milky glass doors, accompanied by clinking crystal once more as Grace settled the tumblers underneath the bar.

Back in the hazy Small Heath sun, she reflected that she might like to know Grace the Barmaid better, even if her blouse’s stitching _was_ too fine for a poor Small Heath barmaid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Dia duit_ = Hello / God be with you  
_Dia is Muire duit_ = Hello back / God and Mary be with you
> 
> -
> 
> hope you enjoyed this! let me know what you think below, and come hang with me on [tumblr](https://aryaflint.tumblr.com/) if you care :)


	3. iii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, posting earlier than i said i would because i love writing this story? it's more likely than you would think.
> 
> i don't really believe in filler since all scenes should serve a purpose, but this is definitely 6k words of Fluff! because i love Fluff! and this is fanfic. pls love it.
> 
> (friendly reminder that this fic is rated M for mature.)

“You’ll fatten her up.”

When Brigid twisted around, her heart jumping to somewhere in her throat, it was to find Tommy at the other end of the barn, hands tucked into his coat pockets, cap pulled low. The morning had been as quiet as it ever was in Small Heath, the sun stalled below the horizon — that he managed to sneak into Charlie’s ramshackle, water-logged barn without raising alarm impressed her.

She turned back to the horse stall, running a gentle hand down the flaxen nose of the mare stabled there. Ginger snorted, tossing her mane, and the hard exhale curled upward in the dimly lit, chilled barn to join the slow snores of the other snoozing horses.

“I want her to like me.” She held out the sugar cube in her palm to the mare.

As Tommy approached, old hay and rushes crunched under his feet. He paused, close enough that Brigid could feel the warmth of him. The early morning, not yet thawed, had flushed his cheeks, even though the dew on the weeds outside promised a warmer day than they had had in weeks.

“She already does.” Tommy propped a cigarette in his mouth, striking a match along the side of the tin, and the spark caused Ginger to stomp her hooves. “Curly’s the only other person she doesn’t nip.”

When he reached out to pat Ginger’s neck, the horse, offended, tossed her mane again. Brigid proffered a second sugar cube to her bared teeth — just as she had predicted, Ginger calmed and munched on her treat.

A smile curled on her lips, and she raised her brows at him as if relaying a secret. “Perhaps other people don’t give her enough sugar.”

He couldn’t properly smile as he took a drag of his cigarette, but she thought that his steel eyes sparkled.

Brigid remained bemused that the notoriously difficult mare had taken a liking to her given that she herself was not particularly inclined to horses. She’d been eleven when she skipped rope into one’s path and startled it into bucking its rider from the saddle. The _crack_ of the man’s head against the cobblestones had rung in her nightmares for a fortnight, and his blood stained the street scarlet for days until their next rain.

“Why are you here so early?” The cigarette in his mouth muffled his words, and the heady cloud of tobacco smoke he exhaled enveloped her.

Now reminded of what had encouraged her to roll out of bed with the stars still winking above, the fat, waning moon bright on the dew in the back garden, Brigid flushed. The picnic basket she’d packed — laden with fresh scones and last summer’s apricot jam, garden apples and honey, hard bread and a heavy slab of salted ham — sat at her feet.

“You always come here first thing on your birthday.” Leaning against the stall door, she reached out to take his hand in hers. “I wanted to be the first to see you.”

Indeed, she had seen very little of him in recent days. Ever since he’d kissed her on the doorstep of her father’s house, they had shared little more than quick glimpses in the betting shop as she added up the day’s totals and he passed through. Once, he had paused to listen as she read to the children — she could feel his presence behind her, the weight of his gaze on her neck — but when it was time for her to herd them home and put them to bed, he had slipped away like a whiff of smoke, only the hint of tobacco and cologne left behind him.

But though his schedule had become unpredictable, the part of Tommy Shelby that loved horses would never change.

He finally pulled his eyes from Ginger to meet hers and brought their joined hands to his lips, pressing a kiss to the back of her gloved hand. “That’s it?” His gaze dropped, just briefly, down to her feet.

The confession slipped out in a rush. “I thought we might go for a ride — I’ve packed breakfast.” He seemed unimpressed, and so Brigid pressed on. “You can be back before you have any business, I promise.”

Polly had doubted Brigid’s ability to convince him, to entice him to celebrate the birthday that he always regarded with such little care. None of the Shelbys bothered much with birthdays — it was hard to celebrate with a father who drank away any spare coins that could buy a gift, who was more likely to deal out a sharp _crack_ across the cheek than good wishes — but Brigid had always woken up on her birthday to newly knitted socks and sticky cinnamon buns fresh from the oven, to her mother’s smile and lilting song. Celebrating birthdays was a tradition she intended to pass on to her future children, and she would need to start with their father.

“Never cared much for birthdays.”

“Please, Tommy,” she said, her voice low. “The fresh air will be good for us both.”

She hoped that the open fields and heavy sun outside of Birmingham might relax whatever part of him had been so tightly wound in recent weeks, that she might be able to draw out his worries and his fears between apricot-flavored kisses. She knew that troubled thoughts lurked behind the impassive marble of his face, and, well — he’d told her not to meddle in the business, but she was worried about _him_.

“All right, then.” Matter of fact, Tommy took another drag of his cigarette, the end of it flaring bright in the dim barn, before squashing it under his heel into the mud.

Yet when he turned to Ginger, the lines of his face softened, the peaceful expression almost out-of-place on the hardened man who had come back from France. “Do you need help saddling her?”

“No!” A too-wide grin overtook Brigid’s face as she turned to Ginger’s saddle on the rack beside the stall. “I’ve gotten better.”

Tommy might have been raised on horses, might have been able to ride as well as he could walk, but Brigid hadn’t learned her way around a saddle until she was nearly eighteen. When he had finally convinced her to ride on her own, the only thing that kept her from bolting the first time a horse stomped at her was Tommy’s firm presence at her back.

But even though she had gotten better at saddling her own horse, Tommy tacked up his stallion, led it from the stall, and affixed the woven picnic basket to the back of his saddle before she finally had Ginger’s leather girth tightened to her liking. While she maneuvered the mare into her head-collar, he slipped his fingers between the girth and the horse’s warm belly.

“You’ll want to tighten this more.” But it was more instructive than anything else — he made the adjustments himself as he spoke. “She was holding her breath while you did it.”

Ginger bristled as Tommy adjusted the girth, and Brigid stroked the horse down her long nose. “Sneaky.”

When the mare was finally saddled, they led the two horses out into Charlie’s damp scrap yard. Ginger’s bay coat shone in the rising light, but Tommy’s dapple grey horse, Keir, looked almost otherworldly next to the glassy, pitch-dark waters of the Cut. The icy chill that had accompanied Brigid on her walk had since begun to melt away, and February’s tempestuous winds had also departed. With the sun shining over a cloudless horizon, Brigid said a little prayer in thanks for the good weather, feeling almost warm under her old coat.

Tommy tossed Keir’s reins around a cracked wagon wheel, gravel crunching under his boots as he approached. He didn’t ask for her permission before his large hands fell to her waist.

A lump grew in her throat, preventing her from protesting.

Of course, Brigid could mount a horse herself now — sweet Curly had shown her not long after Tommy left, the first time she’d dropped by to help him exercise the horses — but it had been four years since she and Tommy had ridden together. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might not know of her new-yet-old skill.

So Brigid tightened her grip on Ginger’s reins in one hand and the saddle’s pommel in the other, fixing her boot in the stirrup. Tommy’s fingers flexed, his cool thumbs pressing on either side of her spine, and then he was lifting her, aiding as she swung her other leg across the saddle. Ginger shifted and bristled, and Brigid let out a slow, bracing breath as she adjusted the reins in her hand. She swayed and shifted with Ginger as the horse adjusted, just as Tommy had instructed her all those moons ago — even if her belly still swooped at the feel of the whole world grumbling beneath her.

From behind, as he approached his own horse, Tommy still looked twenty-one. It would be so easy to pretend, at least for a minute, that they had just begun seeing one another, that he was off to show her the best horse trails in the pastures outside of Small Heath’s soot and ash, to show off his far superior equine skills.

He ascended to his saddle with almost divine ease. “Where to?”

The daydream was ruined — he never used to let her lead — but the thrill of it curled in her chest regardless.

“Johnson’s farm,” she said, watching as Keir fidgeted under him. “By that little brook.”

When he nodded, Brigid urged Ginger from Charlie’s yard, and the mare was eager, coming to a quick trot before Brigid could tug the reins to slow her down. Tommy caught up, and together they turned down the lane that would take them away from the city, a broad cobblestone street lit by the rising sun, their long shadows preceding them.

The morning was still new, the streets largely empty, leaving room for the horses’ hooves to echo in the silence between them. A million questions churned in her mind — what had kept him so busy in recent weeks that he barely stopped to eat? What news of Campbell and his Specials? Why hadn’t he lured her into his bed, or come to hers? What was she meant to be _doing_ at the betting shop now that she’d successfully cut her hours at Mrs. Thompson’s at his bidding? — but Brigid found that none of them would make it to her lips.

He’d been short with everyone, taut as a grenade pin, in the days since she lost her temper at John during the family meeting, and after every potential question, she could hear his disaffected sigh, his scoff, his deflection.

_I don’t need your help_, he’d said.

It was a dewy, silvery, quiet morning, and Brigid didn’t want to fight — she and Tommy had exchanged a lifetime’s worth of barbs in the weeks since he’d returned, stumbling to re-learn the parts of each other they had forgotten and adapt to the new, darker cracks that had appeared in their time apart. As much thought as she had put into their feast, into rolling out the scones to the perfect thickness and picking the ripest apples, she found herself poorly prepared to fill a half-hour of silence.

And so, Brigid squeezed her heels.

The rested mare took the opening, off like a shot — Ginger immediately sped up to a trot, her mane tangling in the wind, and then a canter. Brigid’s stomach sunk to her knees as a peal of laughter sprung to her lips.

The wind whipped at her loose curls, and Brigid heard him call out, but his words were swept away, and so she kept going.

They’d played this game before. When they’d been younger, still green and naive and unscarred, he would give her a head start. If he managed to catch her, which he always did, he would kiss her until she could barely breathe — they never made it back into the city until the sun was already creeping below the horizon.

She didn’t know what she would get now if she won, but since he hadn’t truly ridden in years, she was determined to find out.

Breathless, thrilling minutes later, they traded the cobbled city streets for a muddy country road, and Brigid urged Ginger to a gallop with a sharp kick of her heel. Tossing her mane to the wind, the mare responded in kind, and the high grasses swayed from their momentum as they passed. Somewhere on the wind, she heard a _bloody hell_ — another laugh bubbled up, spilling over her parted, gasping lips. Johnson’s brook, with its bare, weeping English willow and clear waters, was fast approaching, and Brigid leaned forward over Ginger’s neck, very aware that she might tumble from the mare’s back, nonetheless thrilled by the contest.

She could beat him. He _was_ out of practice, after all —

“_Woah_ — ”

Tommy appeared beside her, like Death upon a dirty horse, and his hand shot out to loop into Ginger’s reins.

“Oh, _curse_ you — ”

She cut herself off with a laugh, trying to bat him away, but he tightened his grip with laughter of his own, and Ginger had no choice but to slow down. He reared Keir as well, and as the two horses slowed to a trot and then a walk, Brigid’s world righted again, the breath she had long since left behind catching up to her fluttering lungs.

“What the hell was that for?” His voice like gravel from the wind, Tommy reached up to run a hand through his hair, peaked cap tucked safely in the saddlebag.

Brigid’s lips twisted into a smirk, feeling coy, feeling almost eighteen again, and felt no need to explain to him that some part of her had dreaded the possibility of riding beside him for thirty minutes in utter, crushing silence.

“Wanted to see if you still had it.”

The Romany response dripped from his lips like molten gold, and though Brigid could not speak the language — and indeed, often forgot that _he_ did — she imagined that he was bragging about being born on the back of a horse, though she knew very well he’d been born in his father’s longboat.

He pulled Ginger’s reins to bring her closer, and as the two horses nuzzled their damp noses, she felt her elbow brush his.

When they finally dismounted at the base of the craggy, wilting willow, Brigid ducked through the bare winter branches as he tied down the horses. Atop the basket was a large flannel blanket, which she shook out across the bank to create a sort of solace from the large smokestacks on greater Birmingham’s skyline and the smoke, acres in the distance, curling from Mr. Johnson’s farmhouse. He had never run them off his property, even when they had been younger and much more wild, but she didn’t care to be interrupted by the longwinded old man.

“You’d better eat these scones, Thomas Shelby.” Out of sight, his crunching footsteps crossed from one ear to another as he dealt with the horses. “I made them fresh just for you.”

Brigid had never possessed Martha’s God-given talent in the kitchen, but becoming the primary cook in her family at the tender age of twelve — back when her mother had been bedridden, a slim and sallow reminder of everything she had once done and now could not, and before the sickness had finally taken her — had at least taught her how to make an acceptable breakfast scone.

Curling her legs and heavy riding skirt underneath her, Brigid settled down to the blanket and arranged their wares — two of her mother’s porcelain plates and nearly a whole cutlery set, an insulated flask of strong breakfast tea and two teacups, matching linen napkins embroidered with small purple violets. The tea cloth tied around the scones still held the remnants of the hearth’s warmth.

It was then that Tommy himself appeared through the wooden curtain of willow branches, and he gave a low whistle. “It’s no wonder you nearly won — you weighed me down with the whole kitchen.”

“_Nearly_ won,” she shot back. Her blood still sang in her ears and cheeks from the ride, and she found herself pleased with her performance nonetheless. “Suppose I never stood a real chance.”

“Not one,” he said through puckered lips, requisite cigarette now drooping in his mouth. The warmth of him next to her was enticing, thrilling, and he leaned over her lap for the flask of tea to slosh generous portions in both teacups. “The sooner you recognize that, the sooner you’ll have peace.”

The memory of the time he’d said the same to Patrick muffled her laughter to her own ears — she came by her competitive streak earnestly, after all, having spent nearly her whole childhood trying to beat her brother, whether it was at cards or in maths or at the piano. Long before she’d noticed the razor cut of Tommy’s jaw and the ragged draw of his eyes down her back, he had been the only one of her brother’s mates who could best him at anything, and for that, she’d admired him. _The sooner you recognize that, Paddy, the sooner you’ll have peace._ He had been laughing at her brother in their back garden, a silver shilling winking in the sunlight as he tossed it up with a laugh for some inane bet.

The wind had swept her chignon loose, leaving stray thick curls to tickle her sensitive neck, and so, instead of addressing the oppressive memory, Brigid dove into the bird’s nest at the back of her head to pull out the clip. She would need to start from the beginning to arrange it into the semblance of a presentable manner, especially without the virtue of a mirror.

Tommy, who had previously busied himself with the food, watched as her coal-tinged hair tumbled over her shoulders, across her neckline, down to nearly her waist, and apricot jam slipped from the silver spoon in his hand to _splat_ on an open scone.

When she collected and twisted her heavy curls in one hand, Tommy’s said, “Leave it down,” and the sound of it clenched in her belly. Framed by the dazzling mist, his hair still windswept, he looked positively Dionysian — though his eyes matched the clear sky, they held something much darker.

Warm to her ears, she let the thick twist of hair fall over one shoulder. “A proper lady doesn’t leave her hair down in public — not even in 1919.”

“A proper lady,” he retorted, pointing at her and snuffing his lit match in one fell swoop, “doesn’t race horses, either.”

Something charged passed between them when their fingers brushed over the burning cigarette, and she welcomed the heady tobacco smoke into her lungs in a long drag. Normally, she would pass it back to him, but he looked beautiful through the haze of her exhale, and she wanted to keep him that way.

It was his birthday, but Brigid hadn’t brought him all the way out here for nothing in return.

“Eat an apple,” she said, rolling one across the blanket to him. “A good diet, whiskey and cigarettes do not make.”

As if his fingers were searching for something to do, anxious without a cigarette perched between them, he tossed the apple from hand to hand — it was a seductive move, one that felt more at home on a younger Tommy, and that niggled into the parts of her heart that still ached for who he had been.

He took a bite of the apple at her bidding, and Brigid exhaled again, propping the cigarette between two fingers to help herself to the scone he had in turn pushed across the blanket to her. The jam was sticky on her lips and fingers.

“How are things?” She sucked a drop of jam off her thumb, and Tommy watched, blatant, appreciative. That was well enough — anything to get him out of his head. “You’ve been busy these past few weeks.”

“I’m always busy.”

Brigid rolled her eyes. “More than usual, Tommy.”

A long-suffering sigh escaped his usually controlled mouth, and he considered the apple again, brow furrowed in contemplation. “Just been getting things in order before this new copper starts sniffing. Making sure all the wharves are locked up, none of the men have jumped ship — the usual.”

He leaned back against the willow’s trunk, the wool of his suit scratching, and the hairs on the back of Brigid’s neck stood at attention — though a cool breeze swooped through, rustling the bare branches, it was the mention of Campbell that plunged her into an icy sweat.

“Is he in town?”

Tommy responded, grim, his mouth flat. “Jeremiah saw him last night.”

Chief Inspector Campbell was in her city — haunting every nook and corner, his malevolent shadow stretching down the cobbled streets. Brigid knew not what he even looked like, but Ellen’s letter had sketched a vivid image of his righteous judgment.

“There’s been gossip out of the B.S.A.” She’d overheard Mrs. Smith and the widowed Mrs. Sanderson over the garden wall just the morning prior, stringing up the washing, and now wished that she had paid more attention. “Do you think he’s looking into whatever’s happened there?”

Tommy’s eyes cut across to her, something almost like anger twisting the statuesque lines of his face. “What do you think has happened?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Her shoulders wilting, Brigid busied her nervous hands with unwrapping the ham. She’d have been a fool not to notice the stream of coppers in-and-out of the factory in recent weeks, their immaculate uniforms gleaming in sharp contrast to the soot-blackened laborers, but at the look in his eyes, she faltered. “I just mean I’ve overheard Mrs. Smith in her back garden, talking about all the coppers asking questions. She works the phones there, you know.”

Of course, he knew — there wasn’t a person in Small Heath that Tommy hadn’t cataloged in his ledger, loyal or not, useful or not, enterprising or not. She pressed her lips together, something like hot embarrassment slinking down her spine when he raised his brows.

“Apparently the communists are slowing down operations, jamming machines, organizing on factory time. I reckon they’re just keeping the king’s peace.”

“So, you still think the Inspector is after the communists, then?”

Tommy tilted his head back against the willow, his exhale briefly white and heavy before curling up and away, his eyes averted up. It carried the hint of an eye roll, if not the outright admonishment. “Yes, I do.”

“Right, sorry — no meddling.”

Her heart hammered in her chest, her cheeks grew warm, and as she chewed on the inside of her cheek, Brigid felt as if the promise she’d made now loomed over her like a portent. Indeed, she hadn’t even dared to question her father. Though she had kept their house running as smooth as a racehorse for over a decade, he still regarded her as only a little girl where matters of importance were concerned — just as Tommy considered her only his little fiancee, no matter that she knew the books better than any of the men.

No matter that she knew more of this dreaded _Inspector_ better than any of them.

Perhaps she would have been better off peering over the garden wall and asking Mmes. Smith and Sanderson her questions.

A displeased frown twisting her face, Brigid took another drag of the smoldering cigarette before stubbing it into the muddy bank, before reaching again for the scone. She knew Tommy’s tells — she knew that when he wouldn’t meet her eyes, he was even less likely to answer her questions. She knew the turn of his mouth when she asked questions to which she was better off not knowing the answers, the way he would don his Blinder mask when she pressed too close.

But though he had responded to her question as Mr. Shelby, when he spoke again, after the long silence between them had grown heavy and pregnant, it was with Tommy’s voice. “C’mere.”

His hand, palm turned upward, extended across the soft flannel, a callused, ivory olive branch.

Brigid sighed, twining their fingers together, and then he was tugging, persuading her up onto her knees, his fingers sticky with the juice of his apple, hers with jam, both of them cool beside the glacial, burbling brook. She had to gather her long skirt to inch closer to him, and when she was close enough to feel his warmth, he wrapped his free arm around her lower back.

To avoid careening forward into him, Brigid decided to slip a thigh over his hips. His breath was hot on her lips, on her hotter cheeks, his eyes dragging from her eyes to the bow of her red mouth to the line of her neck.

His lips followed. In the hollow underneath her jaw, he whispered, “I’m sorry I make you angry, even though you’re beautiful when you’re angry.”

Brigid was distinctly aware of the flutter of his lips at her neck, the muscles of his thighs shifting under her — a hot, syrupy desire dripped down her spine, lower into her belly, lower still.

“I’m not angry,” she lied, curling her fingers into his short hair. “I’m worried.”

“I’ve promised to be careful.” It ghosted down her throat, and the shiver that rippled through her was enough to make her forget what Mrs. Smith had said over the bricked garden wall.

Tommy was kissing the dip of her throat then, hot, open, insistent lips tracing the well-worn path that sloped down to her shoulder. The hand at her back found its way into her thick curls, and he used his leverage there to tug her head back, to better access the milky skin under the collar of her blouse.

She felt the gasp that tore from her mouth in her fingers, in her toes. “You’ve barely eaten,” she whispered. The ham was half-unwrapped, the scones would grow soggy, the tea cold —

He groaned when her knees gave out without her permission, letting her full weight settle on his lap.

“It’s my birthday.” He shifted underneath her, and the feel of him was forbidden and familiar, dangerous and delicious — it rocked the frustration right out of her.

“You hate your birthday — ”

“But I like doing what I want.”

Brigid’s unrestrained peal of laughter echoed between them under the willow branches after he muffled her with his mouth. He tasted like apples, like tobacco — he tasted like a cool day and a warm drink. Tommy, hand still twisted in her hair, pulled her closer by the nape of her neck, while the buzzing that had taken up shop in Brigid’s ears grew, every inch of her skin live, electric, where the cotton and wool kneaded between them. Her hand slipped from his hair, fingers curling around a low, knotted branch for purchase, and the bark bit at her palm. The gasp she let out was lost in the rushing in her ears, in the hot, heavy breaths exchanged between them.

The day had promised to be warm, but Brigid was burning, something exhilarating ignited in the pit of her belly. The heat crept up her neck and cheeks, down the slope of her waist and thighs — rather, that was Tommy. He’d untucked her blouse, his large, rough hand snagging the silk of her chemise, his fingers spreading across the soft plane of her stomach.

“Proper ladies don’t go without corsets.” His lips curved a smirk against her own, pleased with his joke, pleased with the way she shivered when he bunched the silk, searching for a way to her skin. “Not even in 1919.”

Her laugh erupted as more of a ragged gasp, stealing what little of her breath was left. “You try racing a horse in a bloody corset.”

When she met his lush mouth again, she let her own fingers begin to explore — she traced the line of his throat, found the buttons of his starched waistcoat and the cotton beneath it, dug her fingernails into his skin. Over the rush of blood in her ears and the absolute quiet of his gasp, she heard the branches above them rustle, creak, whine.

He tugged at her hair again, and this time, it was Brigid who whined, almost pitiful, shifting closer than she would have thought possible. “Tommy — ”

As if he read her mind, he released her curls, leaving her scalp smarting, leaving her wholly and terribly aware of the throbbing in her ears and her chest and between her legs. The day was bright when she opened her eyes, the fields hazy and still, and a flush bloomed high on Tommy’s cheeks, his hair mussed, his brow furrowed — and all of it hers, all of it her doing.

But his exploring hand navigated through the folds of her skirt, up to the apex of her thighs — his hard stomach flexed under her sharp nails — and Brigid gasped for air, drowning once again into him. A knuckle along the lace of her knickers ripped a sharp, surprised moan from her lips, horribly loud in the light of day.

Frenzied, wicked, Brigid could not move herself to care.

She felt his smirk, the cut of his teeth against her jaw, as he paused his ministrations there, and a part of Brigid that she didn’t recognize thought, _Two can play this game_.

Her own hands slipped, tugged, trailed — wasted no time finding his belt. The _clink_ of the buckle was indecent outside of a bedroom. Even more indecent was the feel of his fingers when they slipped around the lace, causing her brow to furrow, her mouth to fall open. She had lost the wager before she even began, but it was only to her benefit. His heavy breathing washed down her neck, filled her ears, and Brigid canted her hips forward into him, her nails scratching the soft skin of his stomach.

“_Bridie_ — ” His voice hitched, reverent, breathless, begging.

Her clumsy, thrumming fingers had finally… _finally_ — hips shifted, clothing bunched, and Brigid whined again, this time when Tommy withdrew the two fingers curled deep inside her. But then she was sinking onto him, gasping into his mouth, swallowing the gravelly groan he gave in return, drinking him in like ambrosia. The willow rustled, and they pulled each other closer. His slick hand was back under her blouse, guiding her hips into his, while her fingers curled again around the low branch, gripping, pulling, leveraging. Woolen skirt on woolen trousers, skin on skin, time passed. A high ringing had drowned out any thoughts in her head other than _Tommy, Tommy, Tommy_.

Bracing her knees, Brigid faintly registered the clink of porcelain as her boot made contact with a teacup, but sweat was dripping down her temple, between her breasts, and Tommy’s lips had followed it down to her drooping neckline. His tongue was hot and dangerous against the swell of her chest and the line of lace he found there.

Her tongue had made sense of her thoughts. “Tommy, _fuck_, Tommy — ”

The snap of his hips punctuated her rhythmic prayer, and then, _then_ he peaked hot inside her, a ragged groan vibrating against her lips, blocking out the sound of her own gasping voice. She raced to follow him, and though he sagged against the willow behind him, he held her close with an arm wrapped around the curve of her lower back, and — and —

His thumb rubbed where they were still connected, and that pressure burst forth, shattered and fractured, drawing out a high, keening moan that sounded foreign on her lips.

“Fuck,” she whispered, eyes still closed, hips stuttering, halting, continuing, her lips parted against the hollow of his cheek.

He tightened his grip around her waist. “_Christ_, Bridie…”

Gradually, gently, the brook, the willow, the soft flannel under her protesting knees emerged again through the haze. His chest heaving, his skin hot against her, Brigid’s hands found the hard line of his jaw, brought his swollen lips to hers — he still tasted like apples, sweet and hers.

Her knees trembled when she finally withdrew from him, stumbling on her long, wrinkled skirt. Crawling across the blanket to the picnic basket, Brigid took in the spilled teacup she’d kicked, the ham she didn’t remember unwrapping, with drooping eyes. Her early morning was catching up with her, sleep tugging with warm, seductive hands — the sharp strike of Tommy’s match kept her from letting her eyes fall closed, and she instead righted the teacup and poured the last bit of tea for herself.

The heavy tobacco smoke cleared away the thick heat they’d ignited between them, and this time, Tommy did not offer to share — he knew she didn’t favor cigarettes after sex.

Instead, she finished off the rest of her scone from earlier, pulled out the hard loaf of brown bread and softened butter, and set out to make herself a more substantial breakfast.

Behind her, Tommy snorted.

“You’re going to eat one as well,” she said.

“I’ve already had my fill.”

He winked when she turned to scowl at him, bringing a flush to her still-hot cheeks, but her response was to pass him half of the sandwich. She’d promised once that she would make sure he ate no matter how busy he became, and she intended to keep that promise.

When she moved back to him, muscles protesting, he welcomed her with a lazy hand, his arm draping around her shoulders like a heavy coat. Together, they savored their sandwiches, watching as the brook, still bloated from last week’s rains, splashed and gurgled. One of Mr. Johnson’s fat milk cows appeared over the line of the horizon, grazing, an unsteady calf behind her, and Brigid found herself smiling as she watched them, her skin prickling as the fresh sun crept higher in the sky, stretching scraggly shadows across their legs.

“I’d like to live out here someday.”

Tommy’s chest shook underneath her, and though she couldn’t see his face, she could hear his smile. “You wanna be a farm wife? Raise chickens and cows and a dozen babes?”

“Not a farm wife, no.” She pursed her lips, attempting to hide the grin that grew there, and forced herself to look up at him — the cut of his collar, the trim lines of his suit jacket — to get the image of Tommy in muck boots out of her head. “But I’d like to have a proper garden. To not hear a factory at all hours of the day, maybe even see the stars at night.”

His hand twisted in the curls at the nape of her neck, heavy, comforting, his thumb at the tender skin under her ear. Appearing to swallow, he considered her lips, traced his eyes along her hairline before his cool blue met her green.

“I’ll get you out of the city,” he said. Leaning forward, he made the promise against her mouth. “Gonna buy up one of those empty estates and we’ll pay people to take care of the garden — ”

“We don’t need a manor — ”

“Who the fuck says?” Laughing, he chased her when she pulled away. Brigid knew not whether he pushed her down or she pulled him after her, but then the flannel blanket was at her back, and Tommy’s nose was nudging her head back against the ground as he propped himself above her. “Who says, eh? I’ll buy you a manor, and I’ll buy you another.”

She curled her fingers together at the nape of his neck, holding him close, a bright, too-girlish giggle at her lips. A flush crept down her neck. “We could have stables, too. Room to ride, room for the Lees and the Boswells and the Strongs and whoever else — could host the fair.”

“The neighbors wouldn’t like that.”

“_Who the fuck says_ we’ll have neighbors?”

Tommy covered her smirk with his lips, and the willow and the wind drowned out the sound of her laugh.

* * *

Brigid had promised — and indeed, intended — to return to Small Heath before Tommy was due for any midday business, but that assurance did not pan out. By the time they had folded the blanket and packed up the remains of the feast, the sun had peaked in the sky, lovely and bright.

Yet, Tommy seemed to be in no hurry — he held Keir to a walk on the road back to Birmingham, and she selfishly took his pace, seizing any additional time with him under the clear sun. They’d spent only blinks of time together since the British Army delivered him back to Birmingham: brief walks to and from the betting shop; even briefer snippets of conversation in the corners of Number Six before one of the kids would come begging or one of the Peaky boys brought in news; and nearly every evening in his bed, sharing kisses but so few words.

Ginger rocking underneath her, Brigid let herself think of their manor and their garden, their horses and hounds, and perhaps even a dozen babes. And, squinting ahead, she found their city didn’t look quite so downtrodden.

“Thank you for breakfast.” Tommy’s gruff voice pulled her from her reverie as they crossed back onto the city’s streets.

When she turned to him, his lips may have been pursed around a cigarette, but his eyes seemed to be smiling, which caused her heart to flutter. “Always.”

“And for the ride.”

The smirk that stretched across his face was positively wicked, like a portrait of Lust and Gluttony and Pride all in one. When her mouth fell open, words lost somewhere between her brain and her mouth, he quirked a brow in admonishment.

“I meant the horse ride, Bridie.” He nudged Keir closer until they were nearly elbow to elbow.

Hot from the insistent sun burning down on them, she scoffed and steered Ginger away. “I’m sure you did.”

But she leaned down to rub the mare’s damp neck to hide her own smile.

That morning, they may have escaped the city before it had come alive, but now, it bustled with skinny cats and carts, market stalls lively and lush, barefooted children racing to-and-fro. Though horses were becoming less common in the heart of the city, on the outskirts, they hardly stood out, and the passersby parted well in advance for them to weave the streets and lanes back to Charlie’s yard —

“_Tommy_!”

With a soldier’s instincts, Tommy reared his horse to a halt, and Keir bucked at the sudden change of course. Brigid was less responsive, comparative novice that she was, and doubled back to join him in the middle of the street. His sharp eyes scanned the crowd, the lines of his face taut, and unease settled into Brigid’s chest where delight had just been. Below them, anonymous faces passed, murmured acknowledgments, tipped caps.

“Tommy!”

He turned again, at a loss, leading Keir in anxious circles — Brigid had noticed Tommy’s hearing wasn’t as sharp as it had once been, a consequence of four years planting grenades and ducking from machine-gun fire.

“There!” Brigid pointed, finally picking out the high-pitched voice rising above all the others.

His cap askew, mud splashed up to his knees, Finn sprinted towards them with little regard to those he ducked and tripped up in his course. When he caught sight of his youngest brother, Tommy dismounted his horse in a fell swoop, and even high above him on Ginger’s back, Brigid felt small as she watched him stride to meet his brother.

“Finn.” He clapped a hand across the boy’s shoulder, leaning forward to meet him eye-to-eye. The brims of their peaked caps nearly touched. “What is it?”

But Finn was gasping for breath, the air now catching up to his empty lungs, and it took a long moment before he was able to respond.

“’S Arthur!” His words were slurred from the exertion, his cheeks flushed. “Coppers dropped him off — he’s bleeding somethin’ awful!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can pry aquarius tommy shelby from my cold, dead hands.
> 
> thanks to everyone for all of the kudos and comments!! i love each and every one and so look forward to hearing what y'all think <3
> 
> come hang with me on [tumblr](https://aryaflint.tumblr.com/)?


	4. iv.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everyone who has left kudos, commented, subscribed/bookmarked - they all mean the world <3
> 
> i love this chapter, i hope you love it too, and now i'm returning to nanowrimo mode!

Tommy leaned even closer to his youngest brother, his face hard. “Bleeding?”

Brigid felt as if a hand had wrapped around her throat, her mind’s eye concocting horrible image after horrible image — Arthur shot, Arthur gutted, Arthur —

“He’s been beaten!”

As quickly as the dread rose within her, Brigid released a heavy breath, crossing herself. As brash as he was, Arthur had been bloodied before; he wore bruises like a tailored coat.

“Right.” Tommy took in Finn’s rosy cheeks and the fear that lined his round face. Drawing himself up to his full height, he clapped a hand on Finn’s heaving shoulder. “Right — Finn, go back with Brigid.”

Steadying Ginger with a firm grip on her head-collar, he leveled Brigid with a stern look as Finn scrambled up into the saddle in front of her. “Keep him calm, and stop the bleeding if you can. I’ll fetch some rum for the pain.”

Fear thrummed in her chest like a startled bird, but Brigid nodded, wrapping her arms around Finn to take control of the reins once more. The boy was shaking, sweating, burning like a furnace in front of her.

When Tommy stepped back, collecting Keir’s reins in hand, Brigid urged Ginger to a trot. Though tired from their earlier run, her coat slick with sweat, the mare cut through the midday traffic will little hesitation. Crowds parted, trained by the sound of horse hooves on the cobblestones, but with the midday traffic so heavy, and with Arthur suffering at their destination, progress felt slow.

“_Oi_ — get outta the way!”

“Finn,” she scolded, knocking her elbow into his side. The offending young man tipped his cap regardless, stepping out of Ginger’s path — but even in her distress, Brigid remained dedicated to her mission to raise the younger Shelbys into respectful, respectable people. “Be polite.”

The boy’s mouth dropped open as if to protest, but she clucked her tongue to cut him off. Ginger, encouraged by the empty side lane that opened up in front of them, picked up her speed once more. As they drew closer and closer to the inner belly of Small Heath, the terraced houses grew taller, the bricks sootier, the gardens smaller. Whereas the smoke on Mr. Johnson’s horizon had looked warm, almost friendly, in Small Heath, it was always dark, always pungent, ever-present.

They had ridden right past Number Six before Finn’s shout of alarm brought Brigid out of her churning storm cloud of thoughts, startling her into rearing Ginger in front of Number Four. The mare had barely taken her first full breath before Brigid was slipping down, stumbling on the long hem of her wrinkled skirt and unraveling her bag from the back of the saddle.

“Take her back to Charlie’s, Finn.” She handed him the reins, brushing loose curls behind her ear. “Let her go slow.”

“But — ”

“I’ll take care of Arthur,” she said, forcing herself smile, even if only for his benefit. “Promise.”

White as a sheet, the flush of exertion faded, Finn gave her a solemn nod, his cap slipping forward. She patted Ginger’s damp coat, thanking her silently for the luxury of the morning, and then Finn jerked the mare forward and away, down the familiar track of Watery Lane to Charlie’s scrapyard.

Brigid didn’t spare him another glance as she hurried back to the door of Number Six. At her feet, dark, congealed blood shone under the high sun, and her stomach swooped, just briefly, at the sight. She had done her time in the Birmingham veterans’ hospital, and in the trenches of Small Heath before that — she could handle cuts and bruises, blood and phlegm.

But the way it puddled on the doorstep of the Shelby home left her woozy.

Inside, the house was brightly lit, sun streaming in from the back garden and through the open door to the betting shop, illuminating the burning red that streaked down Arthur’s face, and stained his pinstriped suit.

“Christ, Arthur, what’s happened to you?” Collecting her skirt in her white-knuckled fists, Brigid hurried to his side.

Shelby women fluttered around him like startled birds, and Arthur opened his mouth as if to respond before groaning with pain, letting his head fall back against the chair. The hob rattled as Polly set the bronze kettle to boil, while Ada pulled towels and old blankets from the adjoining linen closet.

“There you are.” Perching in the chair next to Arthur, Polly shot her a critical look. “You said you’d be back by ten.”

“Didn’t realize I’d need to be on duty, did I?” Brigid grabbed the cooking apron that hung beside the stove, drawing it tight around her waist — experience had taught her that getting Peaky blood out of her clothing could be hell.

Arthur squirmed, winced, panted through gritted teeth. “Don’t make me laugh,” he grunted. “Hurts me face.”

He clenched one hand into a fist, huffing what might have passed for a laugh but instead came out a high-pitched wheeze. Brigid scanned his face with practiced eyes, noting the swelling around his brow, the cuts at his hairline and temples, the busted lip, the blood that leaked from his nose — nearly all of the damage was consolidated to his face. It could be good and bad, in her experience, since head injuries would bleed heavily from superficial wounds, but she was hardly qualified to diagnose any internal damage or trauma.

She’d never officially trained as a nurse — the pay just wasn’t up to scratch — but volunteering with the V.A.D.s for two years had left her with enough tricks up her sleeves to treat the Peaky Blinders’ usual mess.

“Pol, bind his thumb.” Arthur’s right hand shone, pale under the light as it tightened in a fist, but his left was frozen, the thumb bent at an awkward angle.

“Where’s Tommy?”

Only then did Brigid notice John, leaned against the open doorway to the betting shop, toothpick propped, lazy and irreverent, in his mouth. She barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes, something inside her boiling. “He’s fetching rum.”

“God bless him — ” Arthur cut himself with a sharp groan as Polly stabilized his thumb between two wooden slats, retrieved from the first aid supply kit they kept neatly hidden in the linen basket.

A ragged old tea towel wrapped around her hand, Brigid pressed firmly against the deepest cut on Arthur’s temple. He hissed, squirming away, and when she ordered, “Still,” his boot made contact with the table leg as it kicked out involuntarily.

The kettle’s squeal sliced through the kitchen, hissing just as Arthur had when Ada sloshed the boiling water into a large stoneware bowl at the center of the table. “Polly, I ought to do that. I’m trained.”

This time, it was Brigid who laughed. “One volunteer shift doesn’t make you a nurse, Ada.”

“Well, you’re not one, either.” Brown, drying blood stained the waist and sleeves of Ada’s lovely beaded dress from where she had hauled her eldest brother inside, and Brigid felt rather sheepish when she scowled.

After all, she hadn’t been there when Arthur was dumped on the steps of Number Six, too busy frolicking outside of the city like a girl with no responsibilities, too busy with Tommy’s lips on her hot skin and his hands under her skirt, and a frown twisted on her face. Bad things always seemed to happen when she let her passions take over.

Arthur’s hot blood soaked through the linen, and Brigid strengthened the pressure against Arthur’s head. “Hold this steady,” she instructed, waiting until his hand had replaced hers before pulling away.

“Harder.”

Arthur groaned but nonetheless complied, his muscles straining, teeth grinding together. Meanwhile, Brigid dipped a fresh towel into the steaming water, the scarlet blood on her hands curling on the surface. Heat flushing her pale hands, she rung the towel out over the pink water and wiped down the untended parts of his face, attempting to discern what was an open wound and what was merely bruised and bloodied.

“They break your nose?” It had never been straight, not since a Black Country boy cracked it in a fight by the Cut when they’d been younger, and so it was hard to detect what the blood leaking from both nostrils indicated.

He coughed, his bloody spittle darkening her cotton apron, but Brigid was long past flinching. “Don’t think so — just busted it.”

Nodding, continuing to clean his face, Brigid judged the depth of the gash at his hairline where a boney set of knuckles had made contact. It should be stitched together, but she doubted that Arthur would let her get that far — she was lucky that she arrived at Number Six before he stumbled out onto the street looking for hot, whiskey-fueled revenge.

Now that she had him alive and brimming with fury underneath her, Brigid allowed herself to feel the semblance of fear, duty waning in favor of the dread that swelled in her belly. “Arthur, who did this?”

To herself, she sounded like a faint-hearted girl, like someone who had never seen danger and death and so, so much blood. But of course, she knew. How could she not? Brigid found herself nauseous again, knowing that they were lucky — his dead body would have sent the same message as his bloodied face.

Before he could answer, Number Six’s front door burst open on squeaking hinges, this time to reveal a determined, inscrutable Tommy. In his hands was a bottle of dark Navy rum, and a burning cigarette drooped from his lips.

“Let me see him,” Tommy said, muffled, uncorking the bottle as he approached.

Brigid took a step back, her blood-slick hands wiping on the apron. “Give him a swig.”

Though his eyes had begun to swell and bruise, she thought Arthur winked at her.

While Tommy dipped another cloth in the hot water, Arthur tossed his head back, sipping straight from the bottle. Abandoned in favor of liquor, the rags at his temple began to sag down, held to his skin by only a crust of dried blood. Brigid darted forward again to carefully peel back the linen, lest they rip open the wound once more.

When Tommy’s rum-soaked rag burned at his open cut, Arthur hissed, starting, and Tommy had to brace his brother’s head between his hands so that he couldn’t draw away. “You’re all right — ”

But Arthur grabbed Tommy’s forearm in a vise grip, his blood-matted mustache bristling, to focus his attention. “He said Mr. Churchill sent him to Birmingham.”

Brigid’s hands froze, twisting the bloody rags in her nervous fingers.

“National interest, he said.” Arthur’s voice grumbled like a factory machine, jagged through the heavy curtain of cigarette smoke that Tommy’s cigarette left between them. “Something about a _robbery_.”

His face stoic, Tommy backed away, leaving Arthur leaking blood and breathing heavily. Brigid found herself stood between them as Tommy braced himself against the sideboard, and she cast him a long look as she attended Arthur’s face once more. Now that Tommy had joined them, Arthur nearly vibrated with a frenetic heat.

_A robbery._

What had Mrs. Smith said? Brigid sifted through her hazy memory — she’d been in a hurry, trying to string up the washing before the tea kettle boiled, trying to finish up the chores before she rushed off to another day at the betting shop. _Morning inventory came up short _— but of what? What could go missing from the B.S.A. to draw the attention of the War Secretary, Mr. Churchill himself?

“He said he wants us to help him.”

“We don’t help coppers.” John made himself known again, and his shirt strained against his metal sleeve garters as he crossed his arms.

As he spoke, Ada ducked around him, returning with a basket of gauze and tape, needle and thread, and Brigid dove in, busying herself with the gauze, her heart hammering somewhere in her throat as she spoke. “You look like you’ve been _interrogated_, not given an offer.”

“He knew all our war records,” Arthur said, gesturing between himself and his two brothers, and Brigid’s eyes slid from Arthur to Tommy. “Said we’re patriots, just like him.”

The nausea returned, rising like a tide right below her lungs — some patriot he was, to hunt down good, law-abiding British citizens outside of the law, to dump them in canals and rivers where their mothers could never find them.

“He wants us to be his eyes and ears. I said we’d have a family meeting, and take a vote.”

“Absolutely not.” The words spilled out before Brigid had the chance to form a logical argument, and Arthur tensed again, looking up at her, as Polly tied off the splint on his thumb.

His sharp, swollen eyes darted from her, to Tommy, and back to Brigid. “Why not?”

“Arthur — ” She spluttered, aghast. “He’s had you _beaten_. You’re lucky he didn’t cut you up and toss you in the Cut! And you want to _work_ with him?”

Brigid shook her head, ripping off a length of tape that cut through the heavy, pulsating silence and punctuated her question with a morbid finality.

Arthur hissed when she pressed a piece of snow-white gauze across the largest cut on his temple — Brigid was long since past gentleness. “We’ve no truck with communists, or Fenians — we work with coppers all the time!”

“They work _for_ us,” Polly said, her dark eyes glinting as she leaned forward to hold the gauze steady while Brigid taped it down. Though she only had a decade on Arthur, at that moment, she looked like a true matriarch. “There’s a difference.”

“Tommy,” he growled, his gaze sharp over Brigid’s shoulder, “there’s sense in this. He’ll start lifting our runners — we can leverage information to keep the business safe.”

From his perch by the sideboard behind her, Brigid couldn’t see Tommy, and yet the weight of his presence was palpable, the sound of his exhale harsh. The seconds passed like molasses, all of them waiting, Tommy silent.

“What’s wrong with you?” Arthur started, shifting as if to get up, and Brigid shoved him back into the chair, which groaned under his weight, so she could finish her ministrations. But Arthur’s eyes, razor-edged, sharp as broken glass, glared up at her now. “What the _fuck_ is wrong with him lately?”

The turn of his fury to her left Brigid speechless, and she gaped, for Tommy had been so open with her just that morning, almost calm, even close to happy — the closest he’d come since returning from France. And yet now he stood, silent and immobile as a statue, once again burying his thoughts so deep that no one could hope to recover them in the trench she had so carefully uncovered.

“If I knew,” Polly interjected, almost pointed, as her gaze trailed over Brigid’s shoulder to Tommy, “I’d buy the cure at Compton’s chemists.”

Brigid’s face grew warm — from frustration, from embarrassment — silently begging for Tommy to answer. There was no reason to rile Arthur, to rip open the delicately healed wounds that marred their family. But when she turned around, it was to find him pulling his cigarette from his lips with sure fingers, his face solemn, mouth flat.

He pointed the cigarette at Arthur. “No votes,” and then at John, repeating his younger brother’s earlier words. “We don’t help coppers.”

And then he turned, stubbing the cigarette in a murky ash tray, tucked his hands neatly in his pockets, and made for the door.

“Happy _fuckin_’ birthday, then!” Arthur roared, nearly upending the chair underneath him, and Brigid danced backward, avoiding the clumsy fist he shot out as if to haul Tommy back in by his collar.

Tommy slammed the door behind him.

Aside from Arthur’s furious, heaving breaths, they were left in silence. Brigid’s face burned as she focused on the last of his serious cuts, wiping it down with rum, handing the rum to Arthur, taping the gauze down. The amber bottle nearly shattered when he slammed the bottle back to the table, his hot exhale heady with liquor.

“Damn, Bridie.” John broke the silence. Once again the focus of a Shelby brother’s frustration, she looked up in confused affront, this time unsure what she had done to draw such accusation. “You couldn’t have loosened Tom up a bit?”

The tension in the room had charged something live and ugly in her chest, and Brigid scoffed. “Oh, _fuck_ you, John.” The roll of medical tape, stained with her bloody fingerprints, rolled off the table and across to his feet when she tossed it down. “You couldn’t have helped out for once instead of running your fat mouth?”

Brigid didn’t want to listen to his response. She tuned out his insulted swear, ripped the apron from her waist, and threw it down at the base of Arthur’s chair. Instead of responding, instead of taking the bait — she left Polly, words sharp as glass, to reprove John — Brigid stomped the well-worn path to the door, the scent of Tommy’s cologne and tobacco smoke still clinging to the dusty air, and paused only to fetch her bag from the coat rack before slamming the door as well.

Outside, the day had darkened. As bright and lovely as the sun had shone earlier, February’s rain had closed back in, the air sparking with pressure under heavy, pregnant clouds. But even though a cool wind swept down the lane, Brigid was burning, her skin prickling under her clothing, as anger coursed through her.

_You couldn’t have loosened Tom up a bit?_

Brigid was aware that she was stomping like a child, but John had truly vexed her. _Hadn’t_ she?

She still ached between her legs — the good kind of ache, the kind that left her warm and loose for the rest of the day. They had made love twice more before the sunlight arched in the sky, tolling the time, reminding them of the people and the business and the world that awaited them back in Small Heath. He’d run his fingers through her hair, reverent, his hands so gentle she would have believed they had never held a gun. He’d promised he would keep her safe, that he would get them out of the city and the muck, that he was hers —

And, well, he hadn’t answered all of her questions, but then again, she hadn’t answered all of his either.

_Morning inventory came up short._

She didn’t realize she was scowling until she passed Mrs. Smith herself, who looked positively alarmed at Brigid’s dark expression. Schooling her face, Brigid crossed the street with a purpose she didn’t actually have, hoping to avoid the older woman before she could inquire after her health and happiness.

_Fuck John._

* * *

Before she recognized where her feet were taking her, Brigid had made it to Garrison Lane. The eponymous pub stood sentinel at the end of the lane, its dark, golden letters glittering in the flickering light that erupted from the factory next door. The remains of Danny’s episode had been cleared, leaving the path to the doorway clear.

_Damn_ — she’d never delivered the money to Harry.

Renewed with a purpose, Brigid stalked down the cobblestone street,dodging Jeremiah and his Bible with a wave of her hand.

_She_, at least, would do as she had been bid.

Inside, the dust was just beginning to settle from the midday rush to St. Andrews, pints and liquor bottles abandoned on every tabletop, the floor coated in a thick layer of muck and peanut shells. Not a soul remained on the patron side of the bar apart from weathered Mr. Auld, sleeping off his morning drink in the back booth. Harry, stooped from the busy opening hour, collected sticky glasses from empty booths and table, four to a hand, while Grace wiped down the bar.

“Afternoon,” Brigid called, catching both of their attentions.

“Brigid! It’s good to — girl, are you okay?” Harry’s eyes fell to her hands.

Confused by the alarm on his face, Brigid followed his gaze to find Arthur’s blood still staining the pale skin of her fingers, caked around her nails, dripped down her palms.

She forced herself to laugh around the taste of bile. “Oh, Finn fell, scratched up his knees — you know how he is.” Her tongue felt heavy, her cheeks burning under Grace’s gaze from behind the bar top and Harry’s poorly concealed alarm. “No wonder Mrs. Smith looked like she’d seen a ghost when I passed her. Could I use your washroom?”

Harry clapped a warm, broad hand across her slim shoulder, and she felt small. “Y’know the way.”

In the tiny washroom, Brigid scrubbed at her hands until the glacial water had chapped her hands, scraping blood out from under her fingernails with a tailor’s precision. The movement was methodical, almost calming.

Over the course of her life, she had found her hands stained bright scarlet far too many times for her liking — once after her mother cut herself chopping potatoes; too many times in the Birmingham veterans’ hospital; once when Patrick stumbled into Number Six under Tommy’s dead weight after they’d been jumped in Greet, blood leaking from his busted nose and the wound of Tommy’s first bullet. Her hands had shaken then — watching as Scudboat dug the bullet out of his shoulder and Tommy trembled, groaned, passed out from the pain — just as they did now.

To wipe the memory from her mind, Brigid looked up at herself in the mirror as she dried her hands on her skirt — her dark hair was haphazardly pulled back, her cheeks pale and washed out in the dim light as she came down from the hot flush of her anger. The neckline of her blouse had slipped, revealing a love bite on her collarbone that Tommy’s full lips had left for her that morning, back when they’d been so closely entwined that she couldn’t tell when she ended and he began.

Her stomach rocking, Brigid tugged her blouse back into place, took a deep breath, and pinched her cheeks to bring back some color.

Back in the front of the pub, Harry deposited eight smudged pint glasses atop the bar for Grace to sweep into the soapy sink basin, and so Brigid let herself behind the bar.

“Harry, I’ve something from Tommy,” she called, tugging open the bottom of the till. As she tucked the envelope of banknotes underneath the coin tray, shillings and pence clinked together. “Should cover all of it — maybe with interest.”

“Thanks, girl.” Harry waved over his stooped shoulder, now retrieving the broom to sweep up the morning dust.

Sighing, she forced the rusty till closed, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end from the sound — and the heavy weight of a gaze. At the other end of the bar, Grace stared, her blue eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“Oh.” Brigid fumbled for the gate lock, slipping through to the appropriate side of the bar. “Sorry — not for patrons.”

Grace shook her head, her blonde curls sweeping about her shoulders, as if to bring herself out of a reverie. “I’m sorry myself,” she finally said. “Just remembering that I should keep that locked.”

“So, you should!”

They both laughed at Harry, who nudged Brigid with a knobbly elbow as he swept his way by her, peanut shells crunching under his boots. To busy her nervous hands, Brigid slid the collection of pint glasses and liquor tumblers down the long, scrubbed bar one-by-one so that Grace could collect them in the sink basin instead of coming to fetch them.

“Say,” she murmured, shoulders sagging when she finally settled on one of the cracked leather barstools, “could I take you up on that drink while you wash?”

The barmaid wiped her hands on her soft cotton apron, just as Brigid had not an hour prior, though, in her wake, she left only sticky ale stains instead of bright blood. “Of course,” she responded, prim. “What’ll you have?”

“Whiskey, please.” Brigid tucked a long, loose curl from behind her ear, briefly lamenting that the horse ride and the sex had ruined any chance of her looking presentable when Grace, even after a busy opening hour, still looked like a porcelain doll. “Irish.”

When she turned back from the glistening bar with the appropriate bottle in hand, Grace raised her brows, as if in conspiracy. “I’d have to disown you as a friend if you asked for anything else.”

She sloshed out a very generous three fingers into a fresh tumbler before sliding it across to Brigid, who snorted. Examining the fine, neat stitching on the waistband of her countrywoman’s skirt, she reflected that while Grace was certainly charming, _friend_ might yet be presumptuous.

“_Sláinte_,” she said, raising her brow in turn, before tossing back a hearty shot.

Grace, lacking a drink of her own, held an empty, smudged pint glass aloft in a toast. “What brings you here, then?”

The whiskey sank, hot and alive, into Brigid’s chest, emanating from her ribs to her belly and down to her toes, and she followed the first burning sip with another. Quite some time had passed since she last indulged in whiskey. Indeed, it was hard to crave the drink that turned so many kind veterans into raging men — but as it sunk into her muscles, and she slumped forward onto her elbows, she understood.

Brigid nodded her head towards the till. “Finally delivering that money to Harry.”

“From Thomas?”

“The very one.”

The sound of his name made her shoulders tense once more. She remembered his hands, hot on her waist and tight in her hair that morning; how they had been within a breath of one another, and yet his eyes never quite seemed to meet hers — even when he looked at her, he seemed far away.

Unease swelled in her belly, and she quashed it with another sip.

“I met him,” Grace said, sinking her hands into the deep basin of soapy water. It sloshed up and onto the bar top, and Brigid watched as the bubbles slid across the scrubbed oak. “He was very… severe. Is he always so?”

The unspoken question was apparent — _is he the reason you’re drinking in a pub at half-one in the afternoon?_

A frown turned Brigid’s face. He hadn’t mentioned meeting the Garrison’s new barmaid, and yet, as Arthur had articulated so eloquently, he didn’t mention much these days. This time, she savored the liquor before swallowing, and it burned just as much the fourth time as it did the first.

“Not always,” she reflected. “But I suppose all of the men came back more severe.”

“He fought?”

“Everyone around here did. Called ‘em the Small Heath Rifles.” With her crystal glass sparkling in hand, she gestured to the street outside. “Now, they all act like they’re still fighting — brawling and yelling and staying out at all hours of the night.”

How many times had Arthur stumbled home so drunk he could barely keep his eyes open, let alone stand? How many times had Brigid herded the children back to Number Three and tucked them in herself, promising that their da would be there when they woke up, only to find him bloodied-knuckled and sleeping off the night in the betting shop the next morning?

“And Thomas does all of those things?” Looking up, she found Grace’s pale blue eyes fixed on her.

And Tommy —

She sounded like Polly, and it made her drink again.

“No, he doesn’t.” Brigid rested her chin in her empty hand, focusing on the delicate lace of Grace’s blouse instead of her strange, questioning eyes. “He’s not the same as before the War, but in that respect, he hasn’t changed.”

His easy confidence and friendly countenance had given way to a cold, calculating affectation. Tommy had always had his vices, smoking and drinking and gambling with the rest of them — but he always came home to her. He had promised he always would.

“You knew him before the War?” Glasses clinked together under the thick layer of soap suds, and Grace emerged with one in hand to scrub.

“Since we were kids — he proposed before he shipped out.”

Normally, she would have smiled — the thought of young Tommy and his bold, careless laugh could always bring a warmth to her heart — but something had frozen her face. Instead, she considered the ring on her finger, the small diamond flanked by creamy pearls, the delicate platinum filigree. The stone winked under the light streaming in from the high, cloudy windows. It remained an ever-present reminder of the mixed joy and terrible, terrible fear she had felt when he gave it to her all those years ago now, her heart tempestuous in her ribcage.

It had cut his face, when she slapped him after he told her about that French whore that seduced him in Paris — that he had _let_ seduce him in Paris.

“You’re not married yet, though?”

Talking about Tommy had soured Brigid’s mood further in a way that felt too big to explain.

“No, we’re not.” Words clipped, she finally looked up, the crystal cool under her fingers, to fix Grace with a curious stare. “What about you? D’you have a beau?”

“Heavens, no.” When the barmaid shook her head, her perfectly coiled hair swept over her shoulders. “Men are too much trouble.”

“Hear, hear,” Brigid said, toasting her tumbler to Grace. This time, she was able to smile — she’d found herself missing the easy companionship of a woman, the kind that had kept her and Martha up, whispering and giggling under cold winter bedsheets, all through the night.

“What brings you to Small Heath, then, if not a man?” The barmaid had said she needed work, but there was far better work out there for someone who had clearly not spent much time, if any at all, actually working in a pub. “You’d need a good reason to wash up here.”

Grace’s mouth had quirked up in a matching smile as she scrubbed a slick, soapy tumbler with her towel.

But the door slamming behind Brigid prevented her from answering. Grace’s expression fell flat, and she averted her eyes down to the sink. Her tumbler clinking on the bar top, Brigid turned to see who had sobered Grace’s good humor so quickly, only to find John striding across the open front of the pub, still bare from Danny Whizz-Bang’s tear. He was capped and stood tall, requisite toothpick missing from his mouth.

“Mr. Shelby,” Harry muttered, tipping his head.

John didn’t acknowledge the barman as he passed, and the kindle of irritation in her chest that Grace had so briefly squashed flared again, ignited by the fresh wind that had followed John in. Turning her back to him, she took another sip of the amber liquor in her glass, hoping to finish her drink in peace. Her face still cast down, Grace nonetheless traced John’s approach over Brigid’s head, though she failed to welcome him as Harry had done.

A broad hand landed on her shoulder, much less comforting that Harry’s had been. “Bridie, can we talk?”

“We’re talking,” she responded, relishing the burn of whiskey in her ribs.

“You know what I mean.” He huffed, sounding put out — had she not known it to be him, Brigid would have thought it was his six-year-old son stomping his foot at her, demanding more pudding after his supper.

She let the pause between them drag on, heavy like a late summer afternoon, and finally met Grace’s gaze. The barmaid raised her eyebrows, just so, in that way women often did when men were present.

Finally, Brigid tossed back the last of her whiskey, and the sip went straight to her head, fuzzing the edges of her vision when she blinked. “Fine.”

Her boot heel caught on the barstool when she attempted to stand, forcing her to brace herself against the bar lest she trip and smack her nose against the polished oak. John’s hands, as quick as Arthur’s and as strong as Tommy’s, clamped around her waist to hold her steady. They were cool through the loose cotton of her blouse, trailing a little too long over her waist when she turned to confront him.

“I’m fine,” she said, blinking to clear her head of the shiver that raised the hairs on her arms. “What d’you have to say, then?”

His eyes slid over her shoulder. “Outside?”

“_Slán go fóill_, Grace the Barmaid,” Brigid muttered, pushing away from the bar.

This time, it was her that stomped like a child, crossing her arms as she passed Harry and his broom and his pointedly not-curious eyes. Behind her, she heard the _clink_ of a coin on the bar, and then John’s footsteps followed.

In the bright, muddled chill of the afternoon, John nudged her into an alley to the left of the pub. They were sandwiched together between the grimy, soot-blackened bricks and an abandoned ale cask, and a flush rose to her cheeks at his proximity, at the heady whiskey rush in her head that hurt her eyes.

The liquor kept her from needing a coat to stay warm, but when she spotted her bag and coat tossed over his shoulder, she scrambled for them, not willing to thank him for his chivalry. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry if what I said upset you.” In the absence of his toothpick, John’s hands searched for something with which to fidget. They found the razored cap on his head, pulling it off and twisting it in pale fists.

“That’s not an apology,” Brigid accused.

“Course, it is — ”

“No, it’s not!” A hot fury welled within her, and she poked him in the necktie that she had ironed the day prior. When he took a step back, she drew a deep breath in the space he had left. “What Tommy and I do is none of — you _don’t_ get to make me feel bad about him.”

“I didn’t — ”

She cut him off again. “It’s not my responsibility to — to _loosen him up. _I don’t know _what_ has gotten into him lately, so you need to take that up with him, John Shelby, instead of taking it out on me!”

Breathless, anger hot on her cheeks, Brigid hugged her coat close to her chest, the wind stirring the curls that fell around her neck. The skinny alleyway prevented her from backing away any further, and so her outburst echoed, accusing, between them. The whiskey had left her feeling heavy, fatigued — she wanted to dash away once more, but she didn’t trust herself to do it without tripping, and she refused to trip in front of him.

John was staring at her, the lines of his face heavy, and he looked much older than his twenty-five years. Indeed, for once, he looked more like a father than a Peaky Blinder.

“I’m sorry,” he started again, “for what I said. It wasn’t fair.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Do you accept the apology?” Though his words had seemed genuine, annoyance clouded his face once more.

Out of respect for his attempt, Brigid frowned, chewed on the inside of her cheek to hold in her tirade. “I’m still not sure.”

A frustrated sigh burst from his lips. John raised his hands above his head, the peaked cap still twisted between them, as he took a step down the alley, wheeling around on one shined boot heel. Brigid stared, impassive, at the span of his shoulders, the wool of his suit jacket stretched between them, until he turned back to her.

His look was hard. “All right, listen.”

He pointed the cap at her, and Brigid would have laughed at the candor of the gesture if it hadn’t immediately sparked her rage again.

“You want _me_ to — ”

“You know I couldn’t do _any_ of this without you, yeah?”

His voice shrunk as he spoke, quietening until it was just above a whisper, as if every word cost him momentum. Brigid had to strain to hear, to comprehend, over the clanging B.S.A., and when her ears had finally strung his words together, the confession slipped into her lungs and made it hard to breathe.

“I don’t know how to do any of this,” he said, gruff, refusing now to meet her eyes. “I — I shipped out when Alice was only — what? Two? And I was never around anyway. I didn’t have to — I _didn’t_ help Martha. I never learned.”

His dead wife’s name was softest on his lips, and the sound reached right into her ribcage and squeezed her hammering heart tight in its fist. The gaping part of her that still ached for her best friend could hardly stand to hear him say Martha’s name with such grief, not when he had used to say it with such starry-eyed wonder, not when it was the first time he’d uttered it since they reunited at the Birmingham train station weeks prior.

“John — ” Her voice cracked on his name.

“And you! The kids wouldn’t eat if it weren’t for you.” Scoffing, he tucked his cap back over his shorn hair, hands digging deep into the pockets of his overcoat. He continued with disgust. “Reckon they wouldn’t even have shoes.”

Turned away from her, John stared down the length of the empty, cluttered alley, high afternoon sun playing on his cheekbones. When she stepped forward, Brigid settled a hand in the crook of his elbow. “John, you’re…”

But the words left her. What could she say?

That he was doing his best? He certainly wasn’t — out at all hours of the night, letting them run amok, unaccompanied, down Watery Lane and terrorize the neighbors.

That he would learn? Not at his current rate, not when he hadn’t even thought to start leaving her money for their groceries until Polly confronted him, ferocious and protective.

That Martha would understand? Brigid couldn’t bring herself to utter that lie either, remembering the number of times she had dropped in on her dearest friend to find her nursing one of the twins, Alice clinging to her skirts, and hardly, _barely_, keeping it together.

Martha _would _have taught John how to parent their children, had he ever been around.

“I’m shitty at this,” he spat. “Don’t know how to take care of my own fuckin’ kids. You can say it.”

But Brigid sighed, unable to stop herself from leaning into him, the sharp memories of Martha settling into her fatigued, aching bones. Her head rested against his shoulder, and he tensed underneath her. “You were never meant to do it alone,” she finally whispered.

At the end of the alleyway, Small Heath ran like clockwork — men pushing wheelbarrow-loads full of coal to the factory, women hauling market wares back to their homes. Brigid nearly expected to spot Little John chasing James across the cobblestones.

They watched the city, tucked together, in a longer silence than John Shelby ever allowed. She thought she could hear his heartbeat against her ear.

“S’pose I’m not doing it alone.” His voice was gentle — they may have been hidden in a slim alleyway, but it felt almost too intimate for public. “Got you, don’t I?”

He rested a bare, callused hand atop hers, and the warmth was familiar and strange at the same time.

“They do feel like mine.”

The confession heated her cheeks. The girls, with their fine chestnut hair and rosy cheeks, were spitting images of Martha, and both boys had his full cheeks and Shelby blue eyes, but when she plaited the girls’ hair or mended the tears in the boys’ trousers, she thought of her own precious mother. Brigid thought of her mother’s fingers in her hair and remembered the number of times she had woken up on the chaise lounge over her own unfinished mending to her mother’s kiss at her temple, sending Brigid up to bed.

_Don’t trouble yourself, love,_ Eleanor Murphy had said, her blue eyes lined with fatigue. _I’ll finish it up. Gealltanas mé._

_I promise._ Her mother had always promised, no matter how full her plate was.

“And I don’t mind helping you, John, I don’t. But — ”

She would never tell him — could hardly admit it to herself — but when she held Little John in her arms, still squalling and slick from birth as Polly fluttered around Martha, Brigid had cried. She had thought of the baby she lost, and for the briefest moment, the blood and pain felt like a dream.

Brigid’s eyes were burning. “They’re not.” It was more to remind herself than anyone else. “They’re _not_ mine. So, you need to help, too.”

Something like anger welled up in her again — whether at herself or John, she couldn’t say.

“I will.” He heaved a sigh. “I can try for you, Bridie.”

“No,” she said, sharp as broken glass. Her belly flipped, uneasy, as dangerous as leaning forward over a galloping horse. “Not for me — do it for your children.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Slán go fóill_ = Goodbye for now  
_Gealltanas mé_ = I promise
> 
> -
> 
> hope you enjoyed this! please please let me know what you think below, and come hang with me on [tumblr](https://aryaflint.tumblr.com/) if you'd like
> 
> this is my nano project this year, so i may be slower than usual in responding, but responding to comments is the best writing break!


	5. v.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello hello - thanks to everyone who's read so far! nanowrimo is going well-ish (i'm a few thousand words behind schedule, but given that i couldn't really start until the 4th, i'm not worried yet lol), and i'm really excited about how this story is shaping up. but i'll be the first to admit that i'm kind of drowning in words, so editing this felt kind of like an uphill battle. so if you see anything incorrect, pls let me know lol

“God, are they _singing_?” Ada sniffed and tugged her delicate, fur-lined shawl closer around her shoulders, the displeasure clear on her face.

Ahead of them, the Garrison’s windows burned orange, dark shadows lively along the glass panes, and filtering out of the open door were dozens of rowdy, rousing voices carrying the same melody.

It brought a smile to Brigid’s lips, and she squeezed Ada’s arm, entwined with her own. “Oh, isn’t it lovely?”

“Absolutely not.” Ada had already taken a step back, slipping out of Brigid’s grip, and turned her nose up to the darkened sky. With the waning moonlight high on her cheekbones, she looked haughty, fragile, like an inner-city rich girl.

“Ada — ”

“Bridie, you know I love you, but I _won’t_ listen to it.”

Frowning, Brigid took the younger girl’s hands in her own to prevent her from stalking back up Garrison Lane. “You’re no fun, Ada Shelby.”

“_They’re_ no good, Brigid Murphy!” Ada laughed, pressed a kiss to Brigid’s cool cheek, and then slipped away once more.

Brigid pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders as Ada’s figure retreated, the lines of her growing fuzzy in the dark smog. “Be safe!”

A match flame flared, illuminating the hand that Ada waved over her shoulder in acknowledgment.

Distinctly put out, Brigid turned back to the pub, shifting her weight on uncertain feet. She’d anticipated a warm evening in the pub’s snug over a glass of gin, catching up with her soon-to-be sister-by-law after too many evenings spent cooking and cleaning, mending and balancing books. Weeks had passed since she was able to catch Ada before she snuck away to meet with the man about whom she’d been so tight-lipped, but Brigid’s brief victory slipped away as quickly into the night as the girl herself.

Now, standing alone in the middle of Garrison Lane, Brigid paused. She would have been better off curling up with a book, making sure the kids were locked up in Number Three — anything but going to a pub by herself, even if Tommy Shelby’s ring circling her finger would protect her from any untoward advances.

“_I would say such wonderful things to you… There would be such wonderful things to do…”_

The song, warbling like a scratched record, lacked accompaniment, and imaginary piano notes floated in Brigid’s ears. It had been so long since she played for anyone other than the children — a poor tribute to the hours she’d spent at her mother’s side on the piano bench.

“_If you were the only girl in the world, and I were the only boy!”_

The final note gave way to vigorous applause, and Brigid made her decision.

On the other side of the rickety door, the pub thrummed with heat and energy, loud with conversation and the pattering of applause that tapered off as ruddy, soot-blackened men raised their pints to Grace. The barmaid stood atop a chair at the back of the pub, hands on her hips, face flushed with praise — she looked stately, statuesque, at the helm of the crowd.

And something uncertain, something heavy and jealous, crawled up Brigid’s throat.

“What next?” Mr. Edwards roared at the front of the crowd, his amber ale still held aloft. At his side, old Mr. Auld gave a toothless grin.

Grace, her smile wide, looked up from the pair to address the crowd with a wave of her hand. “Any requests?”

“Would you like accompaniment?” The question slipped out, unbidden, before Brigid could stop it.

The crowd quieted, turning in waves back to the door, as they sipped their pints and wet their lips for the next round.

“Do you play?” Grace’s smile shrunk, giving way to an expression that could have been impressed, that could have been a challenge. She swept her blonde curls over a slim shoulder.

“Does she play!” Harry’s deep, jovial voice cut through the crowd’s shouts of approval, and then he appeared, weaving through the crowd towards her with outstretched hands. “Course, she does — learned from her mum! Go on, girl, I’ll get you a drink.”

The barman nudged her forward, and a delighted laugh bubbled up from Brigid’s chest. The men parted, giving way for her to approach Grace’s pedestal at the back of the pub, and as Brigid approached, Mr. Edwards was already pulling out the old upright piano. She’d hidden it behind a stack of old barstools, in-tune and dust-free only due to her careful attention — every few weeks, she would stop by to keep it in working condition and entertain Harry while he swept, but it hadn’t yet felt appropriate to sing in the pub, not when it was so often a place for downtrodden veterans to mourn lost comrades.

“Do you have any favorites?” Grace looked down from atop her perch as Brigid took her seat at the bench, the question punctuated by the sharp _smack_ Mr. Edwards gave the top of the piano as he passed by. The barmaid smoothed her rich burgundy skirt. “I don’t want to sing anything you might not know.”

Before she could respond, a dark pint was shuffled into her hands by Mrs. Donne, the frothy stout sloshing precariously close to the rim. Harry waved from behind the bar, and Brigid had to steady it to keep it from spilling out onto her nicest satin dress.

Mr. Auld, long past a younger man’s courtesy, japed, “You might want to ask yerself the question, dear — she’s been singin’ in this pub since she could walk!”

Turning to Mr. Edwards, the old man laughed at his own joke, and Brigid couldn’t stop the grin that curled around the lip of the pint glass. As prone to exaggeration as he was, Mr. Auld was not entirely correct, since Eleanor Murphy had not let her daughter step foot in a pub until she was at least sixteen. Yet, Brigid and Patrick had plunked at the piano together on many long evenings before the war to a no less rowdy crowd than the one in front of her now.

Though she loved playing, she’d always been happy to let Patrick take center stage. He was the natural musician in the family, after all, and he had radiated, leading them through chorus after chorus with his lovely tenor, from the attention. The others might have been flushed from the drink, but he’d been flushed from the thrill of it all.

“You can surprise me,” Brigid said, flashing Grace a very Patrick-like smirk — she was still his sister, after all, even if the hole he’d left in her heart gaped open, bleeding and aching from grief.

Grace, as gracious as ever, tipped her head and turned back to the quietening, shuffling crowd.

Brigid’s bravado left with the noise, the hint of panic swelling in her belly, but she soothed herself with a deep breath, practiced fingers perched and ready atop the ivory keys — Patrick had never told her what song he had planned before he launched into the next, approaching his performance with the easy confidence with which he approached life. This was nothing new.

Grace’s voice, a low, sweet alto, rang clear. “_Oh, say, let us fly, dear! Where, kid? To the sky, dear!”_

Laughing, Brigid remembered how Patrick would lift his dark brows on every _up!_ and jumped in to join Grace on the next verse, as did the crowd, rough and out-of-tune and lovely.

Within only moments, Brigid was flushed from the heat of the lamps and attention, but time nonetheless slipped away as they continued. Grace, though not as eager a performer as Patrick had been, led Brigid through a similarly eclectic variety of songs — _Someone Else May Be There While I’m Gone_, _Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty_ and _Danny Boy_, the last of which brought tears to sweet Mrs. Edwards’ eyes and ended with another toast to those they had lost.

Brigid wiped a stray tear from her cheek, blinking as she looked up at the barmaid. “Something happier, perhaps?”

Without waiting, her fingers launched them into _I’m Henery the Eighth, I Am!_, a plucky rendition that had always sent Patrick atop a barstool to conduct the crowd with a horrible London accent of his own to encourage the rest. He’d always fancied himself a performer, and Brigid supposed that if they hadn’t been born in Small Heath, if he hadn’t been sent to die in Flanders, he very well could have been.

The crowd was out of breath by the time the rousing song had ended, but Brigid didn’t give them a moment to come down from the high — _Paddy McGinty’s Goat _and _It’s a Long Way to Tipperary _quickly followed, _Molly Malone_ and _The Hills of Connemara_ capping it off, all jovial drinking songs she’d picked up over the years of requests.

Grace herself was out of breath, flushed and bright until the warm, glinting light, and as the crowd took full advantage of the outro to drink and fetch another round, she leaned down close to Brigid’s ear. “Reckon we should give them a break, you think?”

Drawing herself up to her full height, Grace sang over the low din of the pub. _“I am dreaming, dear, of you, day by day…”_

Patrick had never had much patience for slow, pensive songs, but if anyone could stand in front of dozens of men and play the role of _sweetheart_, it was golden, gracious Grace. They fell silent once more, swaying as the barmaid carried them through the first verse, humming along until Brigid swooped in with the accompaniment.

And Brigid had never been much of a singer herself, but she’d spent enough time in Mass to know when a harmony was needed.

So, on the chorus, she joined. “_Let me call you ‘sweetheart,’ I’m in love with you… Let me hear you whisper that you love me, too…”_

The warmth of a home hearth grew in the pub and Brigid’s belly, and she looked out at the crowd as she played — their eyes, their red cheeks, their smiles. It was lovely to be among them, to lift their spirits for the evening, to watch as husbands pulled wives up to dance in the crowded, cluttered pub.

But shadows were moving outside of the milky glass door, dark silhouettes framed by the oak, and then the door opened to reveal the Peaky Blinders, Tommy at their helm.

Brigid hadn’t needed to watch the keys as she played since she was a girl, but at the sight of him, when their eyes met over the capped heads of the crowd, her thumb slipped. Dissonant, almost like a death knell, it startled the men, who looked, shuffled and hunched, turning away from Brigid and Grace atop her chair.

But Grace didn’t stop. She stared across at Tommy, who removed his cap slowly, taking in the scene in front of him, and the Peaky boys came to a stop behind him. Her hands fell to her hips as if she had something to prove —

Brigid’s neck burned, the soft hairs there raising on end. She was all too aware of the matching sets of blue eyes — Tommy and John — that fell to her as her harmony swooped above Grace’s for the final verse. She stared, resolute, at her pale fingers against the ivory keys, and felt for a moment as if she’d been caught breaking the rules.

“_Keep the love-light glowing in your eyes so true. Let me call you ‘sweetheart,’ I’m in love with you.”_

This time, no applause accompanied their last note. Instead, it fell on deaf ears and downturned faces as men muttered into their pints, and in the silence that followed, Brigid busied her shaking hands with a long sip of her stout. Tommy still stood in the entryway, flanked by curious Peaky Blinders.

Above the embarrassed hamming of her heart in her ears, Harry’s footsteps carried. He stepped forward, slightly stooped, his humble grin marred by nerves. “We haven’t had singing in here since the War.”

Tommy’s cold eyes met hers, and through the dozens of grey men sat between them, Brigid felt laid bare, the breath leaving her lungs. “Why do you think that is, Harry?”

His gaze slid away, and then he turned, making for the snug, with the Peaky boys at his heels. His motion broke the dangerous stillness that had fallen in the pub, quiet conversations resuming between tilted heads, around foaming pints. The last to follow his brother into the private room, John shot Brigid an imploring look, toothpick working between his lips.

Was she the one meant to deal with this? In the front row, Mr. Auld’s stony stare seemed to indicate _yes_.

Resigned, Brigid stared into her murky, too-warm pint, not sparing a glance as Grace hopped down from her chair on gentle feet to join Harry behind the bar. A shuffle arose from the back of the pub as men grumbled, donning their coats and downing their ales, and exited out into the cold night through the path the Peaky Blinders had cleared.

She took her time — neatly tucking the upright back into its corner, slipping the bench underneath, tossing back the last of her pint even though the tepidity twisted her mouth. Her hair had begun to slip from its pins while playing, and so she meticulously tucked the loose curls stuck to her sweaty neck back into her chignon. Though she had approached the pub intending to curl up in the snug, she now dreaded it, dreaded facing whatever black mood had clouded Tommy’s eyes. Irritation and embarrassment dueled in her belly, and joining them, inexplicably, was grief.

Grief for the Small Heath she knew — no less dirty but much less scarred. Grief for the bounding warmth that had pulsed in the pub before the Peaky Blinders marched in.

Grief for Patrick.

In the snug, men had shed their coats on the rack by the door and parted to let her through, murmuring acknowledgments, tipping cats — Lovelock clapped a hand on her shoulder, passing by her to fetch a pint, and Brigid forced herself to smile at him before her eyes fell to Tommy. He was already nursing a tumbler of amber whiskey, unmoving, watching with pale eyes as Grace passed pints of ale through the window to the rest of the men. John, a dark specter by the window, spotted her when he turned around and passed her the fresh pint in his hand before grabbing another.

“You haven’t played like that in a long time, Bridie.” The heat of the small room reddened his cheeks. “Reckon you’re still the best in Small Heath.”

Brigid gave a wavering smile, the praise sinking down into her hammering heart, but before she could string together clumsy words in an acknowledgment, Tommy gestured to her with his whiskey glass, the crystal winking in the lamplight. “What the hell was that?”

The men averted their eyes, but Brigid forced herself to look at him, to take the same measured tone she used with the children when they needed reprimanding. “Singing — like we used to.”

“You think these men are in the mood for singing?” He scoffed, pulling out a cigarette.

Unceremoniously, she dropped the pint to the scrubbed table before her, ignoring the unintended force that caused the frothy, amber liquid to spill down the side of the mug. Brigid imagined that she had been carved of stone, expression immobile, as hard as the pit in her stomach.

“They seemed to enjoy it.”

“Of course, they did — why would they, when they get to watch you and that barmaid put on a show?”

_He_ had always enjoyed watching her, as little as he seemed to remember it. The only time Tommy would come to the Garrison and not hole himself up in the snug was when she and Patrick were at the helm, watching them with heavy eyes from the back of the pub. He’d once told her that she’d never looked happier.

Dissatisfaction cracked her facade, and she longed for the pint she had slammed down, for something to quench the anger that flared in her chest. She had never wanted to embarrass Tommy in front of his friends and associates, but his heady eyes stared her up and down as if she were nothing more than a pretty bird he expected to decorate his arm.

“Have you considered, Tommy,” she began, hoping that the tremble in her voice was discernible only to herself, “that we’re trying to move on? That just because you’re miserable, it doesn’t mean everyone else has to be?”

He shook his head in what could have passed for disbelief. “Have you considered it’s not your job to make everyone happy?”

He might have slapped her — it would have hurt less. Someone gave a low whistle, and through the crack in the snug’s shutters, Grace’s blonde hair glinted.

“Well, someone has to,” she shot back, mouth flattening to prevent her lips from trembling. Something ugly and large and entirely too difficult to explain reeled inside her, and her mouth moved faster than her head. “I’ll be singing in this pub every fucking Saturday, whether you like it or not — come by when you’re ready to join us.”

The snug’s heavy door slammed behind her, cutting through the low din of the pub as effectively as her piano, and then she was marching out into the cold night. So much of her joy since the men returned from the War, since she found herself trying to keep the fractured pieces of Martha’s life and family together, since she had been left with only the whispered memory of her dear brother, had come from Tommy. It seemed only fitting that it was he who ripped this recovered delight from her.

Brigid made it a block before the tears were burning hot on her flushed cheeks.

* * *

The betting shop door burst open with a bang, bouncing on its hinges and then falling shut. From her perch in Tommy’s worn leather desk chair, Brigid lacked the vantage point to see who had entered the gloomy shop at such a late hour. Yet it took only a moment of careful attention to the heavy footfalls to discern.

After a day missing in action, Tommy had returned.

_“Where are you?”_

Arthur’s whiskey bottle slammed on a desk, the liquor sloshing out in a heavy wave, and then he strode out of sight. The whiskey puddled on the floor, candlelight dancing in its reflection.

_“It bloody won! Monaghan Boy _bloody _won!”_

His palpable fury was met with a long silence, and Brigid stared resolutely at the numbers in front of her, trying to tune it all out, even as the fog of dread clouded the edges of her vision.

Dozens of men had cycled in and out of the shop to collect their winnings after the news came in from the track, drumming up dust and hollering with victory. Raging over the horse’s win, Arthur had done little all evening apart from wear a track on the scuffed wooden floor, cursing, breathing down everyone’s neck. John swore at him after the fourth time Arthur challenged the odds he had set on Monaghan Boy’s race, sweeping out of the shop with his razored cap low over his eyes. Not an hour prior, Brigid had finally sequestered herself from the rest in Tommy’s office so that she could balance the accounts and come down from the day’s haste in peace.

Tommy was responding to Arthur now, hissing low. “_And the third time we do it — ”_

She had no desire to listen to the brothers fight, not when they’d done so little else since returning from France. The harsh words made her skin crawl, unable to reconcile the memory of their once-good natures with the restrained fury they now dealt.

_“ — a thousand quid bet on the magic horse. And that time, when we are ready — ”_

Brigid sighed, swilling the whiskey around in her tumbler, and tossed back a too-large sip that burned all the way down to her belly.

“Think_ about it.”_

Tommy punctuated his admonition with the slam of a book. His footsteps, sure and strong, carried him closer and closer, and Brigid shrunk in his chair, not wanting to face him when his mood was so black, not when she hadn’t seen him since that dreadful confrontation in the Garrison’s snug. His wrath followed him like a death knell, and she hadn’t the vaguest idea of where he’d been all day, but it had twisted him until he was tight with fury and spat him back to Watery Lane.

She hoped he would pass by, that he would continue into Number Six where Polly was waiting for him.

“What are you doin’ in here?”

Brigid saw his boots, shining like oil on water, before she could bring her eyes up to his face. He was oddly pale even in the low lamplight, almost sickly. The ink from her pen dripped down on the margin of the accounts, and with a swear, she looked down to blot it away, but —

“There’s blood on your collar.”

She stared below his jaw, studying the dried brown spots, instead of meeting his eyes. Heaving a sigh, he tossed the heavy leather ledger in his hands to the flat of the desk, just to her right, rattling the fragile porcelain inkwell and the crystal lamp. His newly freed hands dug in his pockets for his cigarette tin.

“Well, I just shot Danny Whizz-Bang, didn’t I?” Voice breathless, he struck a match and lit the cigarette, only to exhale a thick cloud of tobacco smoke into the heavy pause he left.

Brigid gaped, her heart in her throat. “What — ”

“He’s alive.” Tommy raised his brows as if he couldn’t comprehend her shock, as if he didn’t know that she’d spent a month reading to Danny every day as he convalesced in the Birmingham veterans’ home. “Sheep’s brains.”

The explanation he tacked on made no sense. “Wh — _why_?”

He acted as if he’d done all necessary explaining, as if she should have read his mind and understood his motivations even when he did such a stellar job of hiding them from everyone, and most of all her. “He bayonetted an Italian, so we had to get him out of the city.”

Forcing herself to draw in a deep breath, Brigid leveled him with a blank stare, attempted to project an aura of calm, even as blood rushed in her ears.

“Does Rose know?”

“No.” Again, he looked at her as if she had grown a second head, or as if she were really as stupid as he could make her feel.

Brigid’s heart sank to her belly, remembering Danny’s devoted wife and the two shy boys that had accompanied her every day on her visits to the hospital, each of them spitting images of their father. Her breathing came quick — they would be devastated —

“Tommy — ”

“What are you doin’, eh?” He gestured to the open ledger in front of her with his cigarette.

“Think of his family — ”

“Was lookin’ for those.” He lurched forward as if exhausted, but when he leaned close over the book, the heady liquor on his breath was hot, potent. He’d always been able to hold his drink better than any of the rest of them, but it meant he didn’t know his limits, either — he was as like to stumble home drunk as John, and usually, much worse for wear.

Brigid sat back in his chair, the old wood creaking underneath her, and blinked away a hot rush to her eyes. “Tommy, love, Rose will be devastated.”

“I’ll not talk about this with you, and that’s final.” Hands braced on the desk, he let his head lean forward. He wouldn’t meet her eyes, but Brigid nonetheless felt small in his presence. “Now, why d’you have the books?”

Swallowing the dark, severe protest in her throat, Brigid pushed the book across the desk to him. Like a child, she curled her feet up under her, knees close to her chest. “We had a big day. I wanted to make sure everything added up, like always.”

An exhale of smoke clouded his face. “That’s John’s job.”

“I’ve always done the books,” she said, an ugly heat rising to her cheeks. She wasn’t doing anything improper, anything out of order — only what she’d been bid. He’d _asked_ her to cut back on her hours at the dress shop so she could work more around Watery Lane.

“I want John on top of the books, not you.”

His tone brooked no argument, and even though they were alone, she felt just as humiliated as when he caught her serenading the entire Garrison, as when she stalked out of the pub in near tears, cheeks flushed from the drink and embarrassment. In an attempt to hide the swell of emotion in her chest, Brigid stood and tossed her pen down, forcefully casual, onto the open ledger.

She tried not to care as it dripped over the _Daily Total_ column and blackened the figures she’d so carefully tracked and added. Reaching for her bag to busy anxious hands, she spoke to the desk. “What _can_ I do around here, then?”

“Fuck,” he said, wincing, rubbing his hand across his forehead as if to soothe a headache. The cigarette still smoldered in the other, forgotten. “I don’t bloody know, I didn’t come here to — ”

“Fine.” When she heaved her bag onto her shoulder, the strap caught in her hair, tugging the heavy knot of curls loose, and they fell in a thick sheet down her back. “Tell me in the morning. Goodnight, Thomas.”

She had hoped to stay the night — hoped that after she embarrassed him in the Garrison, she might curry his favor again in bed, as they so often did these days. They might have struggled to actually talk to one another, but their mouths had never hesitated over each other’s skin.

But now, Brigid felt simply foolish, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth as she shouldered past him.

“Brigid — ”

“Goodnight.”

For the second time in as many meetings, Brigid found herself striding away from him, a distinct, monstrous ache growing in her chest where her heart should have been.

Outside of his office, Arthur has collapsed against a desk, head cradled in his hands and a nearly empty bottle of whiskey at his side. The sight burned behind her eyes long after she had escaped the heat of the shop for the cool evening.

* * *

Tugging her threadbare cardigan closer around her shoulders, Brigid stooped to pull a damp pair of her father’s trousers from the basket at her feet. Stood in their small back garden, the wind stung at her chapped red hands, but the weak sunlight carried the promise of spring, and she would have been daft not to take advantage of the southerly wind, carrying the factory smog to the other side of the city, and string up the washing.

As she did, she added her own melody to the city’s clamor, an old Irish hymn that her mother had often hummed while doing her chores. Small Heath, after all, was never quiet. Ever during its slowest hours, the factories banged and clanged, men hollered in pubs, and children squealed, high-pitched, as they darted down the wide lanes in worn shoes. Mr. Robertson, four doors down, was nearly always yelling at his poor wife, and the canal crews coordinating their wares down the tight curves of the Cut three streets back shouted even more frequently.

To live in Small heath, one had to learn to tune out the din, and that had been a skill her mother held in spades, whether at the piano bench or singing as she strung up the washing. So it was that Brigid hardly noticed the violent knocks, the whistles and the dogs, until it was at her own front door.

_“Police! Open up!”_

Fear sucked the breath from her lungs, and the hymn died mid-chorus — tossing the trousers back to the basket, she wiped her shaking hands on her apron.

_“Police!”_

The windows shuddered from the force of another set of knocking, but as Brigid stepped back into the darkened house, there was no other announcement before the door was kicked in. Her blood ran cold, turning the corner to find no less than six coppers stomping through their front parlor, upturning cushions and rugs, emptying drawers and closets. The front door hung off its hinges, giving her a glimpse of the street outside — dozens of black-capped coppers swarming like ants, shattered windows and glinting glass on the cobblestones, her neighbors dragged shoeless from their homes in dressing gowns and handcuffs.

“Can I help you?” Brigid planted her feet firmly on the ground, arms crossed, projecting a confidence that her shaking voice betrayed.

An impassive pair of eyes met hers before slipping away as if they hadn’t even seen her. Two of the coppers disappeared upstairs, while another shouldered past her into the kitchen, knocking her into the wall. In the chaos, one upended their old chaise lounge, and the _crack_ of the old oak against the floor cut through the hurried footsteps, the shouting in the street.

A heat had come to her face, and she stepped forward, hands on her waist. “You can’t just march in here — ”

But she cut herself off with a choke — one of the coppers ripped open her mother’s hutch and promptly began to sweep the delicate pieces out onto the floor. The blue and white porcelain shattered on the floor in a heavy, terrible wave, piling at his dark boots, crunching under his heels.

And Brigid was striding forward before she could think, before she could even process what she was seeing, hands outstretched as if to strike him.

“_Stop_ — ”

He turned — grave, impassive — and then a heavy blow landed across her cheek.

The unexpected force sent her stumbling back on unsteady feet, brought the wicked-sharp taste of blood to her mouth. Brigid gasped, reeling, as white stars spun behind her eyes — the trembling hand she pressed to her throbbing mouth came away red. Her lip stung, hot pain radiating down to her jaw and neck, and as she blinked away the shock, the copper’s eyes slid over her as if she were little more than the scum on the bottom of his shined shoe.

For the briefest moment, Brigid felt frozen — small. The fury that had risen like an ugly tide in her chest had been smothered by the sad, shattered porcelain at her feet. She stared, and stared, and found herself gasping for air, her own scarlet blood dripping into her spread hands.

Until, through the clamor — the whistles and the shouts and the stomps, echoing loud and horrible, shaking the very foundation of the house — another man’s sure, casual footsteps crossed her threshold.

Aged, grey, he checked his pocket watch as if this were no more than a routine inspection. His bowler hat and drab trench coat marked him separate from the others in their inky uniforms, and he sported what could almost be classified as a smirk instead of a solemn frown. As he strode into the parlor, the weak morning sunlight and the destruction in his wake silhouetted him.

He had ordered this. Of that much, Brigid was sure.

Swallowing the blood in her mouth, Brigid fought to school her face, hoped that the heat and damp on her jaw was blood and not furious, humiliated tears. She was not a child, and she was not a frightened, anonymous damsel — she straightened her spine.

He slowed to a stop only feet from her, tall and impassable and inexcusably smug.

Brigid expected he might hit her as well, just to prove that he could. After all, was that not what this entire affair was? A show of power? It had been his bread and butter in Belfast — midnight and morning raids, cracking skulls and bones on the pavement, coshes and bludgeons whenever the people got a little too bold.

Instead, when he raised his hand, it was to pull an immaculate, ironed handkerchief from his inside suit pocket.

She thought she heard her blood drip on the scuffed wooden slats at her feet.

“For your lip, miss.”

If she had still held any doubts about his identity, the deep brogue would have confirmed her suspicions.

Her eyes slid from his face to the handkerchief, considering. Brigid had inherited her temper and her tongue from her mother, but Eleanor Murphy had _taught_ her daughter a woman’s courtesy — her own hard-earned lesson. She knew the strength of a smile and nod, the power of a well-timed apology, the occasional necessity of acquiescence.

And so Brigid took the handkerchief, inclining her head. “Thank you, sir.”

The stiff cotton stung against her split lip, but nevertheless, Brigid wiped her face, meticulously, carefully to hide her shaking fingers, until his handkerchief shone red with her blood.

All the while, he watched her like he might watch a beetle scuttle across the floor — Brigid was acutely aware of her frayed old skirt and stained apron, the untamed, frizzy curls spilling from the clip at her neck, the blood that had dripped and dried on her blouse. It seemed that he, too, had learned his courtesies, though not as well as she. The disgust in his eyes was plain, and Brigid hoped that he could not find it mirrored in her own.

When she offered the scarlet handkerchief back to him, he denied her with a gloved hand. His lip curled. “Keep it.”

Brigid drew her hand back, forcing a placable smile that ripped open her lip, the pain almost blinding. “May I ask what you gentlemen are searching for? Perhaps I could help you.” The gentility of the statement curdled in her stomach like old milk.

But Inspector Campbell no longer studied her face. Rather, his eyes had fallen to her hand — tinged red, still clutched around his handkerchief, her small platinum ring winking in the light that shone through the open doorway.

“My, my,” he started, scoffing. “He steals the hard-earned money off every poor devil in this city, and _that’s_ all he can buy you?”

Red-hot rage flared like a factory fire in her chest. Had she been younger — had she known a little less about the dozens of bodies he’d left piled up behind him in Ireland — she might have lashed out. She might have smacked him, leaving a bloody mark of her own.

But she wasn’t young, not anymore. Brigid had seen as much hardship and despair and death as anyone else, and she fancied herself to be quite canny. Whether he knew it or not, his statement had revealed his mission, and that, Brigid could not ignore.

He knew who she was, just as she knew him.

So, instead of striking the Inspector, Brigid let his handkerchief fall to the floor. She let herself twist her ring around and around her finger, feeling cold under his gaze, and if the movement was mostly to comfort herself instead of for show, well — he didn’t need to know that.

“I heard you never married, Inspector Campbell.” She weighed her words to keep her voice level, glancing up at him through her lashes. “One’s left to wonder what you know about rings, or what goes into buying them.”

The self-satisfied smirk had returned to deepen the lines of his face, as if to crack open his polite facade and reveal the horror underneath. “So, you know who I am, Miss Murphy?”

Inspector Campbell stepped forward, sure-footed, until he was so close that she could smell the stench of old tobacco. But Brigid refused to cow, no matter how fast her heart hammered in her throat. Instead, she found herself peering up at him — he was quite tall, taller than she would have expected for a man of his age and titanic tactics, who had to snatch up good, law-abiding boys from the shadows and rip mothers from their homes on Saturday mornings as a show of strength.

“Your reputation from Belfast does precede you, Inspector,” she said. “I’ve kin there, you know.”

Above her head, the other coppers rifled through their wardrobes, ripped the carefully pressed sheets from the beds, upturned trunks and cases — thirty years of their family’s lives at their mercy — and all the while, searching, searching, searching.

In the parlor, the air had gone still. Brigid could hear her heart as strongly as she could feel it.

Even as Inspector Campbell’s smile stretched higher, it failed to meet his cruel eyes. They had narrowed, staring down the long slope of his nose to meet hers. “And what else did your family tell you?”

“To not cross you in a dark alley, chief among others.”

It was a foolish statement, the kind more likely to drip from Patrick’s confident lips than her own — but a flush of triumph warmed her cheeks regardless. The silence that followed was thicker than the black smoke the factories spewed into the hazy sky, but the flurry of rage on Inspector Campbell’s pockmarked face cut through it with much more success than the sun ever had against Birmingham’s smog.

Brigid waited, unwilling to breathe. Her fingers had paused around her ring, the rounded cut of the diamond digging into her opposing thumb.

Soon enough, his expression settled — a slight, unsettling smile, as still as pond water. He leaned down until he was just centimeters away, tobacco and his morning tea still lingering on his hot, heavy breath.

“Then you’ll also know, Miss Murphy, that I’ve little patience for Fenian scum,” he said, voice adjacent to a snarl, and tilted his head as if she were a particularly complicated painting, “and _no_ patience for liars.”

Her heart in her ears, Brigid matched his smile. “I’ve told you no lies, Inspector Campbell — I’m not so skilled in that theater.”

“You mean it doesn’t run in the family?”

Outside, a shattering sound echoed, a vase or liquor bottle thrown to the cobblestones, and Brigid hoped the Inspector did not see her startle. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re implying.”

Campbell watched her for another long moment, careful, and then, as if he realized that she refused to be physically intimidated, he took a step back. Brigid breathed into the space he had left, hoping that her relief did not show on her face. A tremble had taken up host in her fingers, and so she tucked her hands behind her back, locking them together.

The pieces of splintered porcelain crunched under his shoes, and it sliced through her chest. _How dare he?_

“Perhaps, Inspector” — Brigid’s voice trembled, but in her head, she was Patrick; tall and unafraid, always seeking the upper hand — “you might give me a hint as to why you and your officers are here in my home, rifling through my private property on a Saturday morning.”

He chuckled, plucking a tobacco pipe from his suit pocket, and shook his head. “The nerve.”

Brigid smiled, her cheeks aching from the extended courtesy, insides rocking like a shop sign in a wind storm, and did not answer. He struck a match, held it aloft to the pipe, exhaled a heavy cloud of smoke — an unremarkable act, one she’d watched Tommy perform thousands of times. Yet, where Tommy smoked a cigarette as if it were the means to an end, Inspector Campbell seemed to relish the act itself, as if he were a professor or businessman ready to impart invaluable wisdom. Even through the hot thrum of her heart, Brigid found it remarkable how men could so easily don arrogance, as quickly as they might a coat on a chilly evening.

“Do you know what I’m looking for, Miss Murphy?” The words growled through his pipe’s smoke.

Shifting her weight from one foot to another, Brigid regarded him carefully. “I’m afraid I don’t know what’s brought you to Birmingham, sir. Whatever it is, it’s certainly not in my home.”

As he paced, his eyes dragged across the destruction his raid had left: their only portrait — Brigid, sunburnt and smiling, sat next to her freckled mother; Patrick tall and gangly, his button nose upturned, stood beside their father, a hand on her shoulder — and the upended chaise lounge, the remnants of her sewing box and porcelain shards scattered across the floor.

A trio of heavy footsteps startled her, and Brigid tore her eyes from the Inspector for the first time since he’d entered the parlor. Behind her, the coppers that had torn through the upper levels had returned.

The middle one, clad in a sergeant cap, confirmed her claim. “Nothing suspicious, sir.”

The sergeant was unfamiliar, though clearly a Birmingham native. The first constable could have been a Special in a spare uniform, for all she knew, and the second —

Brigid would have laughed if she thought she could get away with it, if her mouth wasn’t bitter with the taste of bile. The second constable, pale in the cheeks, cap askew, observed her with poorly concealed horror — Edward Ferguson, twenty-one, lived in Green Lanes with his mother and two younger sisters and received five pounds every fortnight from the Peaky Blinders to slip them information from inside the Greater Birmingham Police Station.

“Very well,” Campbell said, huffing his pipe once more. “Keep on!”

The sergeant nodded, just once, as his heels clicked together, and then the three of them clambered toward the door. As he passed, Constable Ferguson’s wide eyes met Brigid’s, almost as if begging for mercy, as if wishing he could utter his last words when his tongue had already been cut out.

She kept her face impassive, but Brigid knew already that she wouldn’t tell Tommy — this time.

The house was left in silence, the dust settling. And though she was now truly alone with the Inspector, an eerie power coursed through Brigid’s veins, hot and terrible and marvelous.

“Listen to me carefully, Miss Murphy.” Campbell didn’t approach her again. Instead, he crossed to the open door, the shadows extending across his face. “I know the names and addresses of every member of your worthless family — Belfast _and_ Dublin. Should any of them happen to visit you, I will know _exactly_ what it is they’re here for."

Perhaps it was the sight of their only, precious family portrait handing precariously on its nail, or the contents of her hand-me-down sewing box strewn across the hearth, or the knowledge that Constable Ferguson now worked under Inspector Campbell and yet remained afraid of _her_, but a foolhardiness rose within her.

“I’ll be sure to pass their itineraries along to you, Inspector Campbell.”

The Inspector froze, and when he pivoted around on a shined heel, his eyes were cold. “Be sure that you do, Miss Murphy, or else you can reacquaint yourselves in the same prison cell.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: this scene between brigid and campbell was the very first scene i ever wrote for this story - my old doc says it was drafted in june 2018 (lmao). i'm so excited to finally share it!
> 
> you should totally look up the songs name-dropped in this chapter in this chapter if you have time - wwi-era music was a laugh
> 
> let me know what you think below! and hang with me on [tumblr](https://aryaflint.tumblr.com/) if ya like


	6. vi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> weet woo
> 
> i Did Not think that it would take me so long to get back to here, but here we are! bright side? i won nanowrimo!!! 50,426 words later, and november is finished! i'm really excited about most of what came out of it, and i can't wait to edit it up and share it with y'all!
> 
> this chapter is emotionally quite big, but in regards to space and time, it's very focused. i hope it that you enjoy it (and that it doesn't feel as short to you as it does to me?) <3

When Inspector Campbell finally stepped over the threshold and back into the bright, hazy morning, and the click of his heels had followed him down the lane to his next haunt, time languished, and Brigid stood. Dozens of coppers raced by the bright gash of the broken front door; shadows shrank across the cobblestones as the sun rose — indeed, Brigid might have stood there, frozen in the odd, liminal space between delirious cogency and utter terror, for hours, had her knees not given out.

She nearly collapsed, her skirts catching on shards of porcelain and sharp wooden splinters, as she stumbled. The devilish spirit of her daring and departed brother left in a shuddering breath — her face burning, breath coming faster, Brigid felt strangely frozen, statuesque, like she wasn’t in full control of her body.

_So you know who I am _—

How could she not know of the dreaded Inspector Campbell? She wasn’t the only one in Birmingham who’d received a flurry of letters from Belfast relatives in the wake of his posting. He was horrible, Death made flesh.

Brigid drew her trembling lip into her mouth — the split stung, the blood acrid on her tongue — and stretched her pale, freckled hands to the pile of shattered porcelain. The ivory and creamy blue glittered in the morning light.

_Little patience for Fenian scum —_

She wasn’t a Fenian. She wasn’t _scum._

Digging through the porcelain, Brigid begged for a single unbroken piece — a saucer, a teacup, even a small sugar bowl — but the curling, gilded vines were a jumbled mess. Every bit was cracked, some of it crushed to fine, sandy dust underneath the coppers’ boots.

_I know the names and addresses of every member of your worthless family _—

“_Fuck_,” she hissed, choked —

A sharp pain curled her fingers, a shard stuck her palm, and when Brigid finally sobbed, the sound was ragged, broken like the porcelain. Shaking, she drew her hand to her chest, watching with watery eyes as hot blood traced an uneven, ruddy path down the lines of her hand, the curve of her wrist, the long plane of her arm.

The porcelain had been precious. A wedding gift to her parents, it was the finest thing they owned, always out of place in the dark, cramped terraced housing of Small Heath — and now it was worthless, too, broken and crushed and spattered with her blood.

_I will know exactly what it is they’re here for —_

Why would they be here? Why would —

“_Brigid.”_

Dizzy, her chest caving in, Brigid gasped in time with his heavy boots. “Tommy.” She sounded young, her voice warbled and foreign to her own ears. “Tommy, he — ”

But then he was on his knees in front of her, his face spirit-white and drawn taut. One hand came to the back of her neck, digging through the mass of black curls to find her heated skin, and Brigid wanted to — her tongue was stuck, unable to parse the words, to tell him that she’d never needed him so desperately —

“Brigid.” The other hand took her by the chin, smudging the sticky blood there, and his blue, blue eyes were hard and blazing and fixed on her. “Bridie, love, look at me.”

In her fist, the splint of porcelain still bit, dripping bright, ugly blood onto his trousers. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, clumsy — the shard fell, its edges gleaming like a red smile, and Brigid clutched at her old, well-worn apron, trying to dab at the dark stains.

Tommy tightened his grip at the nape of her neck, nudging her bloodied chin back up to meet his gaze. He nearly shook her. “Love, take a breath. C’mon, in — ”

And Brigid’s lungs finally gave, clawing for air, and it burned, metallic and acrid, in her chest. Nodding, encouraging, Tommy ran his fingers down through her curls, watched her swollen bottom lip as it trembled against his thumb from the force of another gasp.

Between them, her hand shook as blood pooled in the awkward cup of her palm — hot pain shot up her arm like lightning, landing in her shoulder, shaking the muscles in her arm and twitching her fingers.

“_Fuck,_” she whispered, close to a hiss, as adrenaline finally gave way to agony.

Tommy’s reflexes had been honed on a battlefield — ducking from incoming artillery and machine-gun fire, snuffing matches before the light made it across no-man’s-land, skittering up a rickety tunnel ladder before the mine blew them all to Hell — and his fingers clasped quickly, _tightly, _around her wrist. When he held it aloft between them, blood dripped, dropped, stained his fingers and wrist and the ivory shirt cuff that peaked out from underneath his suit jacket.

Inexplicably, the sight reminded her of John and Martha — they’d sliced their hands, held them aloft and together as the old Gypsy woman, her dark, wild hand pulled back with a golden band, hummed a lyrical verse Brigid didn’t understand, and then, like that, her dearest friend was married.

Brigid could have laughed. It bubbled up to her throbbing lips, lips that begged to ask if this was _it_, if this was all the Romany in him needed, until his hard, cruel eyes stole it all away.

“Who did this?” The words scratched like gravel under a wagon wheel, hardly above a growl, as his grip around her wrist tightened.

Gasping again, this time from the blinding ache, Brigid shook herself from her reverie — behind him, the empty hutch leered. “I cut myself — ”

“No.” A flush colored the hollows of his cheeks, and Tommy cut her off, cold with rage. _“Who hit you?”_

Wilting, as if the last string holding her up had been cut, Brigid felt the hot tears that had valiantly clung to her lashes finally fall. “I don’t know.”

“What did he look like?”

The syllables scraped together, grating, furious; Tommy’s eyes hadn’t strayed from hers. Brigid shuddered another breath — hot pain licked down her arm, melting her bones, leaving her little strength to keep her head up. What did it matter? It was done. She’d been bloodied and belittled and —

“Tom — ”

“His rank?”

There was nothing they could do now, nothing that was off-limits to the coppers, not when they had the ruthless power of Inspector Campbell at their helm. Sniffing, Brigid swiped at her tears with her free hand, fingers marred pink.

“He was _just_ some copper, Tommy.”

This didn’t satisfy him, and she hadn’t expected it would. Tommy knew as well as Brigid that she had their payroll memorized, and if — perhaps, if she searched her memory, she could recall his face, but his badge? His bars and insignia? Brigid dealt in names and ages, ranks and rates, all scratched neatly in the ledger by her own hand — not faces. Speaking with them, manipulating and commending them for a secret was _Tommy’s_ forte, not hers.

“I’ll take his hand.”

“_I_ pushed _him_, Tommy,” she whispered, finding her memory was hazy, clouded by the absolute, seething fear. _Had_ she pushed him? “He was throwing the porcelain everywhere.”

He chewed on his words, teeth working against his lips — but then Tommy blinked away the hot wrath in his pale eyes, which fell to her split lip, the hand puddling with blood, down to the shattered porcelain all around them. Finally, his free hand dug into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, emerging with a fresh handkerchief — soft, snowy cotton, _T.J.S._ embroidered in her fine stitches.

“Hold your arm.” His tight fingers worked down the delicate bone of her wrist, giving her room.

Brigid did as she was told, taking her own wrist in weak, trembling fingers, and a gasp ripped through her when he wrapped the handkerchief around the flat of her palm. Her dark blood had stained their hands, their shirts, and, even as she watched, began to seep through the thin cotton.

His deft fingers securing the knot, Tommy didn’t look at her when he spoke. “If you see him on the street, you will give me his name.”

“You’ll have someone cut him.” Brigid’s lips trembled, her heart uneasy with the thought of someone losing their sight on her behalf, discomfited with the violence to which Tommy could so easily give in.

As if he read her mind and decided that he didn’t care, Tommy said, “I’ll do it myself.”

He acted as if he wanted to scrub his hands over his face, but given that they were both coated in her blood, he settled instead for covering her aproned knees. Exhaustion deepened the lines of his face, and Brigid’s eyes fell to specks of blood that had dried brown on his collar — blood that couldn’t have been hers.

“What’s this?” Quiet, she reached forward to smooth his collar, only to stop at the sight of her own stained fingers.

Tommy shook his head, eyes closed. “The Lees started a fight at the fair — not important.” And then, before she could press, he fixed her with his tired, lovely eyes and spoke, his voice like gravel. “What was all this about, then? Was it the Inspector?”

At the mention of his name, the horror of Inspector Campbell’s stare washed over Brigid like a cold wave; heartbeat wild in her chest, she trembled. “He knew who I was, Tommy. He mentioned my family, he mentioned _you_, he — ”

“Brigid.” Tommy cut her off, his blue eyes bright with focus. “What did he _want_?”

_Right _— business.

“They were looking for something.” Chastised, Brigid sucked in a deep breath, smoothing her bloodied skirts over her knees, trying not to think of the last time she had been covered in so much blood. “Whatever’s been lifted from the B.S.A., they’re hell-bent on finding it. He was… Tommy, he kept mentioning my _family_.”

Porcelain crunched under him as he shuffled closer, and a bloody hand came to her neck, his thumb brushing along the sticky line of her jaw. “He’s just trying to intimidate you.”

“He said that if any of them show up here, he’ll lock them up.” A blinding, righteous clarity struck her, seeming to brighten the dim parlor, and Brigid flushed as rage crawled up her throat. “He’s an arrogant bastard. He’s — hunting down Joe, coming here and tearing apart my _home_. Why does he _care_ what my family _does_, Tommy?”

“I don’t know.” Tommy shook his head, the honesty plain on his face. “It seems he’s brought some grudges along from Belfast.”

Scoffing, Brigid straightened her spine, emboldened again by the distinct, horrible prejudice of it all. Her family were good, law-abiding British citizens — in the times she’d visited, they’d never even spoken of politics in the home, sticking only to japes and prayers. It was _him_ — his self-righteous wrath, his bigotry, his cruelty — that started this vendetta, not her family.

“What is he looking for, Tommy?”

Brigid’s green eyes met his blue, and she found them impassive. When he shushed her, careful and delicate like he might a small child, a hot flash of anger ignited her in her chest, twisting her lips. “I don’t — ”

“No, Thomas Shelby, _don’t_ you lie.” Brigid leaned forward until they were within a breath of one another, refusing to let him shut her out, to be silenced for the sake of his comfort and plots — it had been _her_ home they ripped to shreds. “Not to me.”

“Brigid.”

“Thomas,” she repeated, almost chiding. Hot blood leaked down her wrist, but Brigid didn’t take her eyes from him, afraid that if she did, he would find the strength of a cover when she blinked. “Campbell is ruthless, and he’s cruel, and he doesn’t care if we’re innocent or if we’re guilty — but _I_ do. What is he _looking for_?”

Releasing a heavy sigh, Tommy pressed his forehead to hers, his eyes closed, skin warm, and Brigid remembered the dozens of times they had whispered to one another — tucked under cool cotton sheets, hiding in dark alleyways, wrapped together in the Garrison’s snug while their mates laughed and carried on — in the eight years they had been together.

But this was different — this secret was not like the others, innocuous and naive, like in which month they would be married, or how much he couldn’t wait to get her home and giggling in his bed.

This secret was heady and pitch-black and too big for the slim space left between them.

“Machine guns. Rifles. Enough ammunition to light up a city,” he whispered as his eyelashes fluttered on his high cheekbones. “All bound for Libya before they were lifted from the proofing bay.”

The breath left Brigid’s lungs in a sudden exhale, a feverish dread slinking down her spine. It swelled in her lungs, making it hard to breathe, leaving her to whisper, “_Fuck_ — Tommy, was it you?”

He released a slow, bracing breath, but he didn’t open his eyes. “No.”

“_Who_, then?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head, his forehead rocking slowly against hers, and when he finally opened his eyes, Brigid’s heart stuttered. “Someone a lot bigger than us.”

Between them, Brigid’s hand throbbed, and she longed to wrap it around his neck, to hold him so tightly to her that Inspector Campbell could never get close — to her, to _him_ — again. But her hands were sticky with drying, maroon blood, and she didn’t want to ruin his suit any more than she already had.

Instead, she leaned into him, his forehead and the hand still cupped around her jaw, and brushed her lips against his as she whispered, “Are we in danger?”

“We’re always in danger.” The wry tone in his voice tried to tug his lips up into a smile but failed, and in true fashion, the response did nothing to quell her fear. When she parted her lips to protest, he kissed her before continuing.

“Campbell is as much in the dark as we are,” he said, rubbing his free hand up and down her knee, over the dried bloodstains. “He doesn’t know either, and that’s why he’s pressing us. But we will be safe — I will keep you _safe_.”

Her uninjured hand rose of its own accord, and Brigid curled her sticky, stained fingers around his lapel. “Let me _help_ you, Tommy. I know more about Campbell than any of the rest of you, I know what he’s capable of — ”

With little preamble, Tommy moved to stand, knees cracking — Brigid heard him groan, a vulnerability he only ever displayed when she was there and no one else was. His boots ground against the remains of her mother’s porcelain, and she scrambled to follow him. Ever the gentlemen, he held out a hand to pull her up, his other hand cupping the curve of her waist to steady her as a wooziness swept behind her eyes.

“Tommy — ”

“Bridie, love, look at me.” And he leaned down again, his eyes almost wild, and as he always did, the hand on her waist slipped up to tangle in the dark curls that fell down her back. “I want you to stay out of this.”

Brigid thought of what Inspector Campbell had done to Joe — dumped in the river like rubbish, never to be seen again — but in her mind’s eye, it was Tommy’s body, bloated and pale, that broke the oily veneer of the Cut. The image welled, ugly and dreadful, like bile. “You can’t fight this _alone_ — ”

But, inexplicably, Tommy cut her off with a kiss — his lips searing, almost desperate, it tasted like her blood. The throbbing of her jaw melted down her neck to join the fluttering in her chest, and she pulled herself closer, ignorant of the blood and the pain, desperate for him to feel her.

When he broke off the kiss, his eyes were burning with something that might have been fear, a foreign expression Tommy Shelby. “Brigid, when we got back from the fair and saw what he’d done, I…”

In the utter silence of her parlor, his voice cracked. Tommy closed his eyes and pressed his lips to the corner of her mouth, like he needed her touch to unstick his tongue. “I should have gone to the shop with the boys, but I couldn’t. I needed to see you, make sure you hadn’t been — _fuck_, Bridie. I can’t think straight when I’m worried about you.”

A warm flush crept up Brigid’s cheeks, but her split lip burned as it twisted into a frown. “Do you want me to apologize?”

“No, no,” he whispered, shaking his head against hers. “I want you to stay safe — I want you to stay as far away from this mess as you can.”

And his eyes pleaded with her when they opened, bright in the dim parlor. “Can you do that for me?”

Brigid knew what she needed to say, even if it churned in her belly like a storm cloud. The warm desperation in his eyes slinked down into her chest, worming into her heart, and she’d never — she’d never been able to deny him anything, truly, not when he was looking at her like that.

“Yes, I will,” she whispered, halting. “I promise.”

The silence stretched between them, and Tommy nodded. He moved as if to pull away, taking a half-step back, before trailing his hands down her tender jaw, the long line of her neck, her shoulders and cool arms — gooseflesh followed, pebbling her skin under his touch — before finding a home around her waist.

“You know I love you, yeah?” His eyes had softened, his thumbs rubbing along the cut of her ribcage. “Don’t say it enough.”

Giving him a smile, even as something wan and watery swelled in her lungs and made it hard to breathe, Brigid said, “I know. I love you, too.”

“Come back with me.” Tommy tightened his hold around her waist as if to pull her to his chest. “Don’t like leaving you here alone.”

A sigh slipped from Brigid’s lips, and instead of looking at him — his gaze was too heavy to bear, too much for her fragile heart — Brigid glanced around the parlor. She hardly recognized the room — torn cushions spewed goose feathers, sewing and embroidery needles glinted on the scuffed floor, scattered book pages swept across the room on a damp breeze.

And underneath it all, it was her own. Where would she even begin? How could she hope to stitch it back together?

“I should stay here,” she murmured, injured hand throbbing, clumsy, as she gestured around. “Figure out what to do with all this.”

Tommy’s hands slipped away, sending tendrils of longing up her spine, until her waist was cold where his hands had been. “I’ll send some of the boys over, soon as I can. We’ll have to…” Casting is eyes up to the ceiling, Tommy let a hint of frustration deepen the lines of his face. “Gonna have to clean up the city, make sure people still trust us.”

The reality of his statement clenched around Brigid’s heart, reminding her of the state of their city just outside her door — she wasn’t the only person whose home had been ripped apart, whose heirlooms had been smashed, who’d lost whatever sliver of safety they’d once felt in Small Heath with the Peaky Blinders looking out for them.

A sad sort of smile curled on Brigid’s face, her lip hot from the stretch of it. “Take care of me last, Tommy,” she said, smoothing his blood-stained lapel with her good hand, not wanting to look into his eyes. “I can handle most of this mess.”

But Tommy’s brow furrowed when his eyes came to her again, and he brought up her injured hand, fingers delicate around the bloody handkerchief. She could feel the warmth of his lips through the fabric when he pressed a kiss to the back of her hand. “Give me an hour — John and Lovelock’s boys will be here to help.”

The next kiss he pressed was to her temple, and she felt the ghost of it there long after he’d slipped through the fractured front door to track the well-worn path to Number Six.

* * *

Brigid’s nose still stung with the cloying, saccharine scent of perfume when she stepped into her father’s bedroom. Above in her own room, the coppers who tore her home apart had given little care to the delicate top of her vanity — her only two perfume bottles shattered on the floor, staining the wood beside her upturned bed dark and sticky, the odor clinging to her hair and skin and anything else it could reach.

Regardless, it was better than the blood.

Brigid had only the energy to wish for a bath — boiling water in their largest copper pot and hauling it upstairs to the tiny water closet was a difficult task even with two hands, and nigh impossible with the gash across her palm, the tender swelling in her jaw that leaked down into her neck and twisted her shoulders tight.

The realization had hit her almost as hard as the copper’s fist, the misery of it welling in her chest, making it hard to breathe. Slumping against the kitchen sideboard, water already boiling, Brigid wilted, letting the frustrated tears well in her eyes for the dozenth time that morning.

Something fragile, something more intangible than her mother’s porcelain, had been fractured under the coppers’ heavy boots — Inspector Campbell’s raid had taken them unawares, Inspector Campbell’s coppers had torn apart her home with no care and even less respect, and Inspector Campbell himself had proved to be just as righteous and even more dangerous than she could have imagined.

But Brigid allowed herself only a moment to cry, her quiet sniffing the only sound to echo throughout their empty, broken home, before she straightened her spine. There was no use in wanting, in longing for rest. The day had, truly, only just begun.

Instead, she set about fixing herself in the tattered, shattered mess of their home. With blood slipped down her jaw and neck, dried brown around her fingernails, she settled for running a warm rag over her skin and tried not to imagine what it would feel like to sink down to her ears in a warm bath. She’d washed the deep wound on her palm with gin and bandaged it tightly, setting Tommy’s handkerchief to soak in the now tepid pot of water. Brigid then stripped from her stained blouse, the lace collar now ghastly, and ripped skirt to don a fresh outfit in time to welcome John, flanked by Eddie and Jimmy Lovelock. All three now argued downstairs about the best way to reaffix the front door to its hinges, but she’d left them to it.

As she forced herself into her father’s room, glass crunched under Brigid’s boot — _God_, would they ever get all of the _fucking_ glass out of the planked flooring?

The beginning of a headache throbbed behind her eyes, adding to the acute pain that leaked down from her face to the rest of her body, as she averted her gaze down. Under her boot, Brigid found her parents’ wedding portrait — her mother red-cheeked and bright with youth, her father’s hair still thick and rich — which had been knocked from its bedside perch. The glass in the frame had shattered, the portrait below dusty and glittering.

And as she leaned down to retrieve the heavy pewter frame, Brigid felt that it was her own face staring up at her.

She’d still been little more than a child when her mother passed — hardly thirteen, round in the face, her curls still shining with her father’s auburn tint that had since given way to a rich, inky black. To Brigid, Eleanor Murphy had always been, first and foremost, a mother, her face lined, her hands busy, her eyes stern. But she’d been twenty-one when she married, and with a sharp pang that seared her chest, Brigid realized that she was now older than her mother had been in the portrait.

If she had once resembled her father, the years had worn away the fullness of youth to reveal Eleanor Murphy’s round cheekbones and delicate chin; Brigid’s hair had darkened to the same hue that shone through her mother’s gauzy lace veil; her eyes crinkled in the same way when she smiled.

Tears spilled over Brigid’s cheeks again, stinging the split in her lip, salty on her tongue — the sharp grief for the mother she had known, and the woman she had _not_, overtook her chest, swelling in her lungs until she could barely breathe. Before her tears could stain the precious portrait, she placed it facedown on the bedside table to protect the fragile parchment from any loose glass and gasped for air.

How horrible it was, that _this_ is what she had become — crying over photographs, over shattered glass and torn cookbooks. How horrible that she would never know Eleanor Murphy as anyone other than the devoted, determined, disapproving mother.

Desperate for air, Brigid forced open the old window, sticking in its sill, until a spring breeze could sweep through. The bed pillows had been ripped open — as if they were hiding ammunition in the goose feathers, which ruffled and fluttered about her feet. The wardrobe had been thrown open, the floor littered with her father’s work trousers and holey cotton shirts, while the chest that held the bulk of her mother’s clothing — the bits that Brigid hadn’t claimed for herself — was upended, spewing practical cotton and wool alike across the dusty floor, interspersed with the spare satin and finer silk.

_“Oi, need a bin down here, Scud!”_ John’s voice filtered in through the open window from the street below, grating against the sound of glass swept over the cobblestones.

Brigid dove into the pile of old skirts and stockings, gowns and blouses, folding each methodically, sorting by color and then by material. Along the way, Brigid admired her mother’s neat, tiny stitches — not for the first time, she found herself wishing she’d paid greater attention to her mother’s instructions. Her clothing wasn’t half as well made, and she had the luxury of Mrs. Thompson’s Singer treadle.

Underneath the pile of fabric, a hotchpotch of trinkets and possessions had spilled — a fat golden locket and a tangled string of yellow pearls; a wrinkled Bible with a thin rosary tucked between the pages; a spindly pair of spectacles too large for a woman’s head. Perhaps they had once belonged to John Byrne, the grandfather Brigid had never known? She folded them neatly atop the Bible atop her mother’s wedding dress — a frothy mauve satin, trimmed in silk brocade around the high collar, the sleeves fitted and the tulle skirt bustled. It was a work of art and love, she knew, sewn over six frantic months by her mother herself.

A glint caught her eye, and Brigid stooped to collect a set of four scuffed, leather-bound books, all embossed golden with the year — _1884_, the year her parents had married and set off to Birmingham to start their lives. The spines were cracked, the lined pages well-loved and decorated with her mother’s utilitarian handwriting.

Something fluttered in Brigid’s chest, taking her breath as she ran her fingers over the top stamp and considered them. Her mother had never journaled — not that she could remember. Eleanor Murphy had never had the time, always washing and sewing and sweeping and cooking. As horrible as the day had become, as upside-down as their entire home had turned, holding the proof in her hands that her mother had lived and thought and _recorded_ those thoughts nearly brought Brigid to her knees again.

Eagerly, the mess forgotten, she flipped open the first one: _29 March 1884_ —

“_Brigid!_”

Shouting rose again, but this time, it wasn’t the dulcet tones of a Blinder crew — her father’s gruff, work-worn echoed up the stairwell, cracking with something like terror.

Her fingers slipping over the page, Brigid’s eyes cut to the open bedroom door. “Up here!”

Hardly another moment passed before he thundered up the stairs; his heavy footfalls indicated that he hadn’t even paused to shuck off his work boots, but Brigid, almost rueful, couldn’t mourn the soot he would track in. What did it matter what he brought in with him when their home was in shambles?

“Jesus Christ — ” Indeed, when James Murphy crossed the threshold of broken glass, his boots were pitch-black, his thin cotton shirt stained with sweat and ash, the lines of his face traced with soot, and yet he crushed her to his broad chest all the same. “Come here.”

A startled squeak slipped from Brigid’s lips, her ribs aching for the breath she hadn’t had time to catch, the hard binding of the journals digging into her belly. “Da, ‘m all right.”

She tried to pry her face from the smoky cotton of his shirt, straining to catch a glimpse of his face. Brigid found him wide-eyed, as if he was just, at that moment, taking in the destruction of his bedroom — the wardrobe that spewed his clothing across the floor, the upturned mattress and ripped pillows, her mother’s chest emptied and cracked. His grip around her loosened, just enough, so that she could catch a full breath.

“What’s happened? Took forever to get back — coppers at every intersection, checking work permits and bags, patting down — ” His flecked green eyes, so like her own, furrowed with worry as he took her in. “God, what’s happened to _you_?”

His rough, blackened hand came to her jaw, and Brigid winced, pulling back, as his callused thumb brushed the sensitive, swollen skin. Yet, when her father tilted her face to the side, it was with the same gentleness he’d used when she’d been just a girl and scraped her knees on the cobblestones; he traced under the split of her lip as if she were a porcelain doll, fragile like he had been when she scalded herself on the cast iron the first time she’d tried to cook supper all on her own.

Brigid knew she looked a fright — the tender ache of her jaw throbbed down the line of her neck and into her shoulders, mixing with the sharp, swollen pain of her lip.

“Some copper — ” Cutting herself off, Brigid sucked in a bracing breath. Had he already seen it? Had he crunched the pile of porcelain himself in his dash upstairs? “He was tossing around mum’s porcelain, and when I tried to stop him, he hit me — I _tried_ to stop him, I swear it — ”

“Oh, girl,” he whispered, pressing a warm, dry kiss to the temple opposite her swollen cheek, “I don’t care about the porcelain.”

Tears burned behind Brigid’s eyes, and though she tried to stop them, they spilled over and down her hot cheeks, stinging the split in her lip and tasting salty on her tongue. “But it was _mum’s_ — ”

“Brigid, when you’re as old as me, those things don’t matter.” His hand cupped the back of her head, fingers gentle in her loose curls, and Brigid felt like little more than an embarrassed child as she peered up at him through watery eyes. “You’re safe — _that’s_ what matters. Everything else will work itself out.”

Brigid tried to match his smile, but her lips trembled, hardly able to stretch through the throbbing ache in her jaw. “I’ve been trying to clean up, but there’s just…” She sighed, letting her shoulder slump as the ghost of her civilities, exhausted underneath Inspector Campbell’s searching, righteous eyes, slipped away. “I hardly know where to start.”

Her father’s hand detangled from her unruly curls as he took step back, running a hand up and through his thinning hair. With an exhale, he said, “Tommy’s sent some lads?”

“John, and Lovelock’s boys, yeah.” She nodded her head to the open window, the hint of amusement quirking her lips — down below, they were swearing through their teeth, grunting, clumsy and ungainly as they refit the front door.

He nodded. “Let them take care of it. You should rest, love.”

“I’m fine,” Brigid lied. Martha had once told her that there was no shame in admitting when she needed help, when she was sad, when she needed a break — it was a lesson she hadn’t taken to lightly. “You want them going through mum’s things? They won’t put it all back right — she’d have a fit.”

But her father was stepping forward, his large hands extending to collect the set of journals still propped between her bandaged hand and her belly — her clumsy, stiff fingers couldn’t stop him before he was prying them away from her, a frown on his lips. Whereas Brigid had needed to hold them against her body, he balanced them between his two hands with ease.

“All of this can wait,” he said, shifting them under one arm. “Your mother would understand, I promise.”

Brigid deflated with a single exhale — just as her injured hand couldn’t stop him from taking her mother’s words from her, she found herself unable (or unwilling?) to fight him. Her eyes were protesting the light, the headache that throbbed behind her eyes a reminder of how many tears she’d spilled in such a short morning.

His free hand cupped her shoulder, comforting, and Brigid said, “I didn’t know mum kept journals.”

“Did you read them?” The question was pointed, his eyes wide — she wondered if he ever had, if it was too painful for him to remember Eleanor Murphy as she had once been, still round-cheeked and lovely, or if it felt like an invasion of privacy, even if his wife was a decade dead.

Brigid shook her head. “No — ” An unexpected yawn ripped itself from her lips, and a sharp pain shot down her neck, shuddering, causing her to whimper. “I’d like to, though.”

And when James Murphy smiled, it was sad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, please let me know what you think! comments are so gratifying, and i swear y'all have better thoughts about my own story than i do. i so look forward to hearing what you have to say! and as always, come hang with me on [tumblr](https://aryaflint.tumblr.com/) if ya want :)


	7. vii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> self-indulgent tea-leaf reading because i love female friendships? you betcha

Midday slipped by the betting shop in a rush of black-coated men, who placed last-minute shillings before the afternoon race and drummed up dust and mislaid cigarette ashes. And the Peaky Blinders, as such, had fallen to their afternoon routines. Arthur, feet propped atop his desk and leaned precariously in his chair, napped in his office, while John scratched in the ledger by the phone, waiting to hear back from the tracks. Scudboat dealt out a fresh round of cards to a few of the bookies over an afternoon pint.

And Brigid, wet rag in hand, swiped crumbs and pencil shavings from each desk to the floor, which she would sweep up later — there was no point in doing too much while the door was still open, not while there were still bets to be laid. As she passed by his abandoned desk, she fetched Arthur’s leftover lunch plate — sandwich crusts pushed to the edge of the china, just like when he was a boy — and Scudboat winked, his golden earring glinting.

She tried to return the humor, but the tender, swollen skin along her jaw protested, a warm ache seeping down her neck — now that the copper’s mark had darkened to an inky purple, it excused her from smiling often.

Just as well.

As Brigid rolled the chapped, healing split in her lip between her teeth, crossing to the kitchen of Number Six, she reflected that it had been weeks since she felt like smiling as she puttered around the shop, counting pence and collecting pints.

Nudging the shop’s double doors closed with her hip, Brigid found Polly elbow deep in soapy water, washing up from the previous night’s supper and the morning’s breakfast. She huffed when Brigid slipped the lunch plates into the basin.

“Thank you.” Voice crisp, Polly shook her head, rolled her shoulders, irritated by the dark hair that slipped from the clip at the back of her neck.

“Of course — doesn’t take long to get behind on it all.”

“One impromptu sleepover later, and the house looks like we’ve had a pack of animals stay the night.” Polly snorted, and, well — if her voice was gruff with frustration, it wasn’t Brigid’s place to judge.

Brigid had already begun to tidy the kitchen table, laden with the remains of the children’s lunch — a half-empty biscuit tin and dribbled jam; plates shining with bacon grease, littered with sandwich crumbs.

A woman’s work was never done, even when the men found themselves content.

And content, indeed, John had found himself in the Garrison’s snug the previous evening — Brigid had spent an hour trying to water down his whiskey to no avail as he worked his way through an entire naggin in the time it took Brigid to down a pint. He’d stumbled across the snug, plastered and heavy-eyed and grinning, when she finally made to leave. Only Tommy’s firm hand and harder look had prevented him from trapping her under his arm and forcing her back down.

By the time they returned to Number Six to shepherd the children back to their own home — by the time she’d convinced Tommy to help her, pressing her lips to his jaw and perhaps wincing, intentionally, when he returned the favor to her swollen skin — Polly had already tucked them into the spare rooms, two to a bed, and retired herself.

Sighing, Brigid rolled her delicate cotton-and-lace sleeves up to her elbows, fumbling with the little pearl buttons that always slid out from underneath her fingers. “I’ve spoken to him about it.” She cut herself off with a frown and sunk her hands into the warm water beside Polly. “I thought — ”

But Polly whistled low under her breath when her dark eyes finally slid over to Brigid’s. “Aren’t you a sore sight?”

“Hush.”

Her spindly fingers, dripping, reached out to nudge Brigid’s chin toward her, and Brigid hissed, jerking away — more from frustration than pain. “Christ, Pol — ”

“You should let me make a salve.” She dropped her hand back to the water, watching with impassive eyes as Brigid tucked her chin down to her blouse and wiped the damp away.

Brigid averted her eyes back to the washing up, dutifully ignoring the warm lick of pain down her neck as she gritted her teeth. A few days had passed before the bruise finally settled into her skin for true, but it now flowered, ugly and purple, across the cut of her jaw, the hollow of her cheek, curling around the bow of her lip — Polly’s dark eyes weren’t the only ones to observe her with mixed curiosity and shock.

“I don’t need a salve,” she muttered, fumbling underneath the water for one of the Garrison’s beer steins. “It just needs time.”

“Could speed it up.”

“No, thank you.”

Polly, as she was so wont to do, communicated her dissatisfaction without any words — the porcelain plate she deposited into the drying rack rattled as she sighed. The sudsy water sloshed up onto her dress sleeves as she dove back in, and then, as if she decided she hadn’t made her disapproval clear enough, she said, “You are just like Thomas — act as if asking for help will be the death of you.”

Brigid hardly stopped herself from rolling her eyes to the planked, water-stained ceiling as she pulled her hands from the water, reaching across Polly to set the last of the plates on the drying rack.

“I’ll be fine, Pol,” she said, resting her hip against the sink basin.

Polly dried her hands on a flannel tea towel, eyes narrowed. “I’m not so sure about that.”

Quirking an eyebrow, Brigid took the proffered tea towel to wipe down her own hands and chose not to acknowledge the odd chill that slid down her spine at Polly’s words. “What — you think I’ll look like this forever? How ghastly.”

“Mockery is unbecoming of you.” Polly’s barb came as quick as Brigid’s own, and she found a smile turning on her lips, even as the scabbed split protested. Polly gave Brigid one more pointed look, and then she was crossing to the table, where, of the children’s lunch, Brigid had left only the tepid teapot. “I haven’t read your leaves for some time.”

Her dark lashes fluttered as she upturned a teacup from its saucer, sloshing out a generous portion, and her eyes, knowing, glinted in the sunlight that shone in from the back garden. “Let me see them.” She looked like a specter or spirit, her hair as wild and untamed as she.

“Polly, I don’t have any questions.” Brigid crossed her arms, aware of the clipped heartbeat in her throat.

A weak hint of steam curled up from the tea. The porcelain scratched along the wooden tabletop as Polly delicately pushed it across to her, and the sound raised the fine hairs on the back of Brigid’s neck.

“Don’t need questions —just feelings.”

Polly always had feelings, and when she said the words, Brigid felt distinctly inadequate. The Shelby matriarch’s intuition wasn’t like that of others. It ran deeper, darker, in a way that Brigid couldn’t understand — it came in shivers and spurts, dreams and visions. She claimed it was a gift inherited from her mother, a blessing from God, but Brigid remained unsure if her God and Polly’s God were the same.

Brigid heaved a deep sigh and finally, on heavy feet, joined Polly at the table. Victorious, the older woman took a seat, crossed her ankles, and leaned back with a smile that was as unbecoming as Brigid’s mockery.

Taking the teacup in hand, Brigid considered the leaves there — they swirled around the edges, jilted from where they had settled. What would Polly see there? A portent or prophecy? The cut of Inspector Campbell’s long trench coat through the fog, or Tommy across from her at the head of her mother’s church, the golden light shadowing his cheekbones?

“The leaves will know what you don’t.”

Ignoring the small voice in her ear that told her the leaves would only know whatever _Polly_ wanted to, Brigid tipped her head back and sipped from the too-bitter tea until she couldn’t bear the leaves any longer. Only a scant sip was left, dirtied in the ivory porcelain.

“Swirl.” Polly had braced her hands on the table as if to center herself, leaning forward to watch — “Left hand.”

Throughout the war years, Brigid had gained nearly as much experience having her tea leaves read as Polly did interpreting them — at one point, when the flow of news from France had slowed to a mere trickle, it had become a daily practice. They would share a pot of strong tea, and then Polly would twist the teacup in hand, furrow her dark brows, and predict what the day would hold.

The morning that Tommy’s smudged, tear-stained letter was pushed through the mail slot — _Patrick was killed yesterday, love — _Polly’s face had been pale, ghostly, when she peered into Brigid’s teacup.

And so, as something dark twisted in her belly, Brigid chose to humor the other woman, shifting the porcelain teacup to the appropriate hand.

Upon the third swirl, Polly pushed the saucer forward to the edge of the table. “Turn.”

The teacup clinked when Brigid gently inverted it on the ivory saucer, and they both watched as the dark tea leaked from underneath the lip of the cup. After a long second, without needing Polly’s instruction, she turned the saucer thrice to the left in time with the ticking grandfather clock, the porcelain singing as it scratched against itself. Finally, Brigid tapped her index finger at the center of the cup’s upturned base three times, as if knocking — _Can I come in? _

She’d laughed the first time Polly told her she had to ask the leaves for permission, but the older woman’s dark look had squashed her girlish delight.

Polly’s fingers were slow, her expression measured, as she took the emptied teacup in hand and considered the dregs — tilting her head, spinning the cup, furrowing her thin brows. Brigid’s neck tingled as she waited, fingers curling around the back of the chair in front of her. Dust motes settled in the golden stream of sunlight; the grandfather clock ticked.

“Well?”Brigid finally pulled out the chair, sweeping her skirt around her knees as she took a seat, tucking her hands under her thighs like a schoolgirl.

Polly’s voice was little more than a drawl. “Patience.”

She didn’t meet Brigid’s eyes as she spoke, which meant she didn’t see Brigid roll her own — it had never taken Polly Gray longer than a few seconds to determine what the leaves were telling her.

Another long moment passed before Polly deposited the teacup onto a soft knitted doily. Inside, a dark cluster of leaves marred the porcelain, and Polly twisted the cup once more with a delicate finger before finally catching Brigid’s green eyes with her own.

“Decisions, decisions,” she tutted. Her expression, as it so often was, was caught between happy and sad, her mouth flat, brows raised.

Brigid leaned forward to better take in the leaves, but they belied no more truth than Latin or Greek or any other language she couldn’t speak. “Decisions about what?”

“Yourself, mostly.” Polly gestured to the cup as she leaned back in her chair, considering Brigid with curious eyes. Between them, the teacup glinted. “Some about love, some about family. But mostly, yourself — very soon. In fact,” she trailed off, fetching the cup once more, “some have already passed.”

Annoyance twisted her lips into a frown, and Brigid slumped forward with a huff. “That’s hardly helpful, Pol.”

“Of course, it is.”

“That doesn’t tell me anything — ”

“Generic questions beget generic answers, Brigid.”

Heaving a sigh, Brigid rested her chin on her hands, entirely folded in on herself as her eyes followed Polly’s pale fingers along the edge of the cup. “What about Tommy?”

Polly smirked like a fat cat who’d caught a canary, and under her victorious look, Brigid felt like little more than a naive child. Polly knew, as well as anyone, that Brigid couldn’t deal in generalities, and she’d been lured right into the older woman’s trap.

Leaning forward, Polly retrieved Brigid’s teacup again, and her dark hair swept over her shoulder as she shifted. But the move seemed performative, more than anything else. At that moment, Polly was young again — hosting seances in the backroom of a pub, hawking a teapot in hotel tea rooms, her skirt pockets clinking with pence as she promised people fame and fortune.

She hardly glanced down at the leaves before saying, “You can trust him.”

“I trust Tommy.” Brigid frowned, a finger tracing underneath the rough scab of her split lip.

“Do you?”

The response came too quick, almost clipped. “Of course, I do.”

Her heart was in her throat as she shrunk underneath Polly’s single raised brow, her voice belying what the niggling voice in the back of her head already knew — Tommy was hiding something. He’d kissed her and held her hands and promised that he would keep her safe, but there was _more to it._ _More_ he hadn’t said. _More_ churning in his cool eyes.

Brigid had never been satisfied in halves, no matter what her mother and her schoolteachers and she herself had tried to train into her forced smiles and gentle nods.

“You’re on the right path,” Polly said, conciliatory, settling the teacup in a single hand atop her crossed knees. “He won’t let me read his leaves, but your paths have always been entwined.”

“What else?” Her heart was in her throat, heat rushing to her cheeks as a pleased smirk twisted Polly’s painted lips.

“A new arrival in your life. Soon.” Polly’s voice was delicate, considering the leaves in front of her. “Perhaps already here — the line is smudged. You’re inclined to trust them, but the leaves remind you that trust needs to be earned.”

“Who?”

Shrugging, Polly sat the cup directly in front of Brigid’s folded fingers, the _clink_ dull on the wooden tabletop, and Brigid found herself at eye level with the damp, brown lip of the cup. “Can’t tell you that, love.”

Something almost like frustration dipped in Brigid’s chest, forcing her upright to take a full breath. A lone curl had escaped from her chignon, and she tangled it behind her ear. “_The leaves_ have lots to say about trust, Polly Gray.”

“So, do you.” Polly’s dark hair glinted in the sunlight as the back garden door opened, her pale skin almost golden.

Brigid made to protest, to gripe and tell Polly that she could simply _ask_ Brigid the questions she so desperately, _clearly_, wanted the answers to, rather than leading her through the pretense of this leaf reading, but as it so often did, the thundering of heeled shoes foretold the appearance of children.

“_Are you readin’ leaves?”_

Brigid startled around to find Alice leaned against the doorjamb to the back garden, her twin plaits falling over her shoulders and ancient wisdom twisting her lips.

The smile in Polly’s voice was apparent when she ushered the girl in, a curling finger peaking into the edge of Brigid’s vision. “C’mere, sweet one — come tell Auntie Brigid what you see.”

Alice skipped forward on scuffed, browned shoes, her cheeks flushed from the early spring warmth, and a damp, earthy air followed her in. John’s eldest daughter possessed all of her mother’s solemnity and none of her common sense — she’d been digging in Polly’s card decks and crystals since she could walk, mixing herbs and flowers with mortar and pestle to curse her brother, holding seances with her dollies. They entertained it, for the most part, so long as she didn’t scare the baby.

Pressing herself close to Polly’s side, Alice took the cup in her dusty hands, and the older woman cupped the back of her head. In a remarkable impression of Polly herself, Alice tilted her head and the cup in time, her freckled cheeks scrunched in concentration.

“Bridie,” she finally said, her voice slow and deliberate, “you gotta stay safe.”

Attempting to hide her smile, lest she discouraged Alice, Brigid leaned forward once more to place her chin in her hands, fingers conveniently covering her lips. “Safe from what?”

“A secret enemy! Betrayal!” Alice’s free hand flung out, the porcelain cup balanced precariously in the other. Her brow furrowed as her brown eyes fell to the cup once more, and she twisted around. “There’s an arrow — bad news from…”

Trailing off, she spun again as if trying to get her bearings, pointing with a single, freckled finger through the parlor door. “West?”

Brigid nearly lost her composure, a laugh bubbling up to her lips, but Polly, as if impressed by her niece’s dramatization, considered the girl with dark eyes that bore no amusement. “And what else do you see?”

Brigid’s smile flattened, a sobering feeling sinking deep into her belly as Polly leaned closer and observed the cup over Alice’s shoulder.

“A forked line.” Without sparing Brigid a glance, Alice used her pointed finger to gesture down the center of Brigid’s teacup. “A decision — one line leads to mountains… Powerful foes! And the other, a… hammer?”

“What does that mean?” Brigid realized, belatedly, that she sounded almost breathless.

She could discount Polly’s reading well enough, if only because she _knew_ Polly was talented enough to fool her into talking about whatever was bothering her, the leaves be damned. Alice, on the other hand, was too young, too guileless, to read them for anything but the truth.

Alice, eyes wide, looked up at her Aunt Polly for only a brief moment before turning back to Brigid with a dimpled smile. “It means you win!” The girl dropped the teacup back in front of Brigid. “I know you’ll make the right choice, Bridie.”

She beamed, and then, as if she’d done little more than tell the weather, Alice skipped from the kitchen once more to the tune of her siblings’ delighted screeching in the back garden.

Something unfamiliar and strange clawed in Brigid’s belly, transforming into anxiety by the time it reached her throat. “Polly — ”

“I don’t know where she learns this stuff,” Polly snorted, cutting her off when the back door finally slammed shut.

“Polly, what decision is she talking about?”

The older woman’s gaze fell to Brigid, still hunched forward over the table with her mouth in her hands; something danced in Polly’s dark eyes, and immediately, the fear scratching in Brigid’s lungs dissipated.

Polly didn’t lean forward to fetch the teacup once more, having apparently gleaned everything she could, when she said, “Don’t be daft. There’s no _one_ decision, no _one_ forked path that will lead to _betrayal_ and a _secret enemy_. Best to not let a child interpret that — the nuance is lost on her.”

Dismissing the question with a wave of her hand, Polly stood, and with her, she took the abandoned teapot to dump its dregs into the sink basin. Chin in hand, Brigid reached out to twirl the teacup on its doily by the handle, feeling almost despondent. “This is why I hate it when you read my leaves — I just end up questioning everything! How am I meant to know what to do with all of this?”

Before Polly could answer, the double doors to the betting shop creaked open, revealing Tommy, thin and black-capped, a lit cigarette drooping in his lips. He was dressed as if to leave, his black woolen coat snug around his shoulders, the metal of his gun winking briefly in the light as he reached up to fetch the cigarette and stub it in the sideboard’s ashtray.

“What’s this?” His bright eyes fell to the table, almost amused, and he crossed to her on sure feet. A chilled hand — had he just arrived, and now meant to leave again? — fell to Brigid’s shoulder, his fingers curling into the dimple of her collarbone through the loose cotton blouse. “Hmm — a bat. That’s never good.”

He and Polly shared a laugh at Brigid’s expense, and she swore, rising to her feet and barely containing the stomp of her boot’s heel. “What’s a bat mean, then?”

Tommy cupped his hands around her shoulders as she went to draw away, a smile tugging at his mouth. “Death, of course.”

“Oh, Thomas Shelby — ” As if he were ten years old and tumbling through the kitchen with Patrick on his heels, Polly swatted him with the tea towel when she passed by. “Don’t scare her.”

Polly leaned down to collect the sticky teacup and the saucer that held the dribble of tea drained from it, loose leaves swirling in the dark liquid, and fixed Brigid with her measured smile. “The bat is a symbol of death, but not necessarily your own — could be a relationship, or a sudden shift in mindset. As I said, you have decisions coming up.”

“Curse you both.” Brigid frowned, her stomach swooping as if her entire world had been turned upside down before righting itself under their laughter. “What — would you like a sixpence, now, for your services?”

Tommy’s grip slipped from her shoulders, reverent, until he cupped one hand around the lace of her sleeve, still shucked and buttoned to her elbow from the washing up. “Only three for you, love.”

Polly laughed again, but the tolling grandfather clock prevented Brigid from replying — one o’clock. “Oh, I need to — ”

The hand at her elbow nudged her in the direction of the parlor door, and Tommy said, “That’s why I’m here.”

Heat rose to Brigid’s cheeks, crawling up her neck and the tender skin of her jaw. “You don’t need to walk me. I’ll be perfectly fine.”

It had taken days since Campbell’s raid on Small Heath for Brigid to convince Tommy that she didn’t need an escort to Thompson’s Tailoring and Haberdashery, that she was capable of protecting herself — even pulling her switchblade on him from the pocket of her coat, exactly where she’d promised him she would keep it, to prove her quick reflexes.

“I am going that way for business,” he said, gesturing with his lit cigarette in the direction of Watery Lane.

Polly quirked a brow, now drying the porcelain dishes that she and Brigid had long deposited onto the rack. “He wants Small Heath to see him with your pretty mug — so they know he didn’t order the raid.”

“Polly.” Tommy’s voice was measured as he tucked himself closer to Brigid, and the swollen skin of her jaw twinged when Brigid upturned her face to look at him. His cool eyes didn’t stray from Polly’s.

“What? Don’t need tea leaves to see that.”

* * *

The stretch of the low sun along the street outside illuminated the dress shop through its foggy front windows, the mannequins like specters. Brigid hadn’t welcomed a patron in an over an hour, which left her slumped over an embroidery hoop at the front counter, one needle in her mouth, one in hand, and no less than three perched in the pincushion next to the thread box.

And yet, instead of continuing with the delicate, embroidered collar, Brigid found herself eyeing the till. A slow day meant little cash — if she started now, she could leave on time. She might return to Watery Lane before supper cooled, perhaps even have time to get Alice and Katie at the piano to practice their rudimentary skills.

The thought tempted her, and she poked the active needle into the pincushion, followed quickly by the one between her lips.

At least until the bell over the door tinkled, slicing through the silence, accompanied by, “Bridie!_”_

Startling, Brigid slid off the stool on unsteady feet, her heart jumping to her throat, only to find Ada, disheveled and flushed in a beaded peach gown, crossing the front of the shop to her. She turned the front corner of the counter in time to catch Ada, who tripped on her low heel, nervous fingers clutching around the younger girl’s shaking shoulders. Tears clung to Ada’s lower lashes but had yet to spill, and Brigid drew her to her chest, letting Ada tuck her face into her neck.

“Ada, what is it?” Brigid’s imagination conjured up a dozen gruesome, grief-stricken images — Peaky Blinders dead and dying, the betting shop raided and shuttered, the Shelbys dragged away in handcuffs — as Ada trembled like a leaf in her arms. “Ada, love, tell me what’s wrong.”

Ada’s tears had slipped out then, streaking down Brigid’s chilled neck, and it raised the hairs on her arms. Dread rose like a heavy fog off the Cut on a cold morning. Hand coming to the back of her head, Brigid ran her fingers through Ada’s soft, styled hair, shushing, reminded horribly of the number of times she’d done the same to Martha.

She let only a moment of silence pass before she nudged up the girl’s chin. Her striking Shelby blue eyes were rimmed red, her cheeks flushed and stained — lovely and terrible, the sight of her turned Brigid’s stomach. “Ada, what is it? What can I do?”

Ada chewed on her lips, already swollen from prior worrying, and wouldn’t meet Brigid’s eyes. Staring around her ear, as if she were more interested in the satin dresses hung up behind them, Ada finally murmured, “Tommy’s gonna kill me.”

Brigid knew better than to laugh when Ada was distressed, but she did, indeed, bite the inside of her lip to cull the smile that threatened to grow there. Tommy Shelby had few weaknesses, an intensely short list of things from which he would put up with any sort of nonsense — horses were one, and Ada was another.

“Tommy adores you,” she said, cupping Ada’s cheek and the mussed hair stuck there. “He’d never hate you — let alone kill you.”

Scoffing, Ada backed away, her hands coming to wrap around herself, looking for all the world as if she was trying to hold in her lungs. “He’ll kill _him_.”

“Him? Who — ”

But she knew — the man Ada had been sneaking around to see, at once flouting propriety and guarding her secrets for fear of her brothers’ wrath. Not even Polly had managed to pry the truth from sweet, defiant Ada, who had never even mentioned him — simply sneaking out without a word, disappearing like smoke down by the canal.

Something like dread, like familiarity, rose in Brigid’s belly at the look in Ada’s eyes.

She’d been here before.

“Ada — ”

“I went with Pol just now,” Ada whispered, her words shattering like glass. Fresh tears slipped from her eyes, dripping down onto pale pink silk. “Eight weeks, or so.”

Brigid let herself give one heaving sigh, bracing her hands on the countertop behind her, and closed her eyes.

Eight weeks — _early_. Earlier than she had been; earlier than Martha. Brigid’s had ended in tragedy, and Martha’s in exultation. Where would Ada fall on the spectrum of female shame? What consequence would she suffer for falling, unmarried, into bed with a man she loved?

“Does your man know?” she finally asked. Her heart ached with emotions that she couldn’t, at that moment, even begin to process, but _this_, this she could focus on. “Have you told him?”

“No.” Ada’s shaking hands swiped at her tears as she came to stand beside Brigid, their shoulders brushing in the slowly stretching shadows of the dress shop. “But he’ll marry me, I know it. He says he loves me.”

_I would have married you, first chance I got_. The memory of Tommy hunched forward in his bed, cradling his head in his hands, wormed its way into Brigid’s heart, turning her cold. Her chest ached with the force of a sob, with the sound of the icy rain on his bedroom window as he slipped out of the same room in which she’d bled out their baby.

She covered Ada’s chilled fingers with her own, trying to warm them, trying to pass on whatever strength she could. “What are you going to do, then?”

Ada sniffed, her free hand swiping the hair away from her sticky forehead. “Aunt Pol wants me to get rid of it, but…” Her voice cracked, and her tongue darted out to wet her red lips. “But I can’t. It’s _mine_, and it’s Freddie’s too, and I want to keep it.”

But at that moment, the floor seemed to sweep out from underneath her — Brigid’s jaw dropped. “Freddie? Freddie — ”

“Thorne, yeah.” Ada’s mouth twisted into a bitter frown. “Freddie fuckin’ Thorne.”

“Fuck, Ada, _why?_” Brigid’s heartbeat was in her ears as she stared thee younger girl with poorly concealed dread.

If anything was likely to ruin Ada’s chances of keeping her baby, it was the father. Freddie Thorne had been as thick as thieves with Tommy and Patrick before the war, but he came back angry, radicalized, with more knowledge of armed revolution than any law-abiding citizen should ever need. When Tommy spoke so disparagingly of the foolish, big-mouthed communists who jammed machines at the B.S.A., and when her father complained about the whispers and the leaflets and the meetings he was meant to cull, Freddie was always the culprit.

And when she came across him in the Garrison and overheard him whispering about guns and rifles and revolution, Brigid could only wonder, sick to her stomach — hadn’t they had _enough_ of it all?

“I love him, and he loves me.” Ada’s voice was soft, wistful, dreadful.

Brigid had no doubt that Ada loved Freddie, or that Freddie had said as much to her — but was love enough? Could it be enough when the coppers and the government were both breathing down his neck, always searching for the snow on his boots?

“Eight weeks is early, Ada.” Brigid faltered and pressed her lips into a firm line, the words wilting like a flower under frost.

It had been _easier_ with Martha. Easier to whisper, then, tucked together in Martha’s bed, that her best friend would be better off without the baby growing in her belly. That it would be foolish to trust an unmarried man to step up, stay faithful, and provide for a family. Brigid hadn’t yet herself known the consuming intuition of being a mother — what she knew now, even if she’d only learned as it was ending.

“Love is good. Love is wonderful, but — ”

But Ada frowned — her pale, trembling hand landed on her belly, still flat and soft with youth under her beaded gown. “I thought you would understand.”

“You don’t want to be left unmarried,” she said, quirking a brow — the hot flash of indignation that flared in her chest took Brigid by surprise, and she swallowed, trying to hold firm. “Freddie loves you, but if he won’t _marry_ you — ”

“Please, Brigid, _please_.” Ada turned, a flush high on her cheeks, to take Brigid’s hand in both of hers — like she was drowning and Brigid was the only one who could pull her out of the deep. Her eyes softened, and somehow, Brigid knew that this was the moment Ada had been waiting for, that she’d been preparing for, that had encouraged her to come to Brigid for help.

“What if Tommy had died and never come back? You wouldn’t have been married, but you would have had a _part_ of him.” Her cheeks flushed, the sickly pale giving way to bright pink, and Ada’s voice cracked. “Wouldn’t you have wanted to keep it?”

Feeling exposed in her old satin dress, Brigid pulled away, crossing her arms over her belly to stave off the tide of dread and grief threatening to swamp her. Outside, darkness had fallen for true; candles winked in opposing shop windows, and she focused on them instead of meeting Ada’s pleading eyes.

Brigid hadn’t been able to keep her baby. She hadn’t been given the choice.

“Right,” she whispered, somehow still too loud in the quiet shop. “What can I do?”

She hadn’t been able to keep her baby, but she could help Ada keep _hers_.

Ada, her eyes alight with a plan, stepped even closer to Brigid, the frenetic warmth of her palpable in the cool, empty shop. “Polly says she’s going to tell Tommy tomorrow if I don’t. And I thought — well, I figured — ”

“You want me to tell him.” It slipped out as little more than a whisper — Brigid’s mouth went dry, and she chewed on the inside of her cheek.

“Bridie, he’ll listen to you.” Something like hope crept up Ada’s face as she raised her brows. “Tell him I want to keep it, that I’ll marry the father. You can convince him, I _know_ it.”

In the silence that Brigid let stretch between them, Ada rubbed her hand over her belly — the motion was intensely maternal, horribly private. The sight of it clenched Brigid’s heart in its fist, and she had to shake her head to clear out the fog.

Her fingers found Ada’s, knuckles brushing against the fine beading of her satin gown. “All right, then. I’ll help you.”

“Thank you, _thank you,_” Ada said, lurching forward — this time, when they hugged, it was Brigid who tucked her nose into the other girl’s neck, her free hand creeping around to clutch Ada’s waist. “I knew you’d help, thank you — ”

Ada continued to whisper, her voice at once animated and terrified, but Brigid was already imaging the morning sun that would streak through the betting shop’s muggy windows when she knocked on Tommy’s glass office door. She could picture the cigarette burning between his fingers as he waved her in, the cold, blank stare he’d give her when she finally revealed Ada’s secret.

She remembered the bloodstained nightgown she’d stumbled into Number Six wearing, and how Polly had never returned it to her. They’d never spoken of it, but Brigid assumed the blood had set in too long to be scrubbed out.

She thought of the letter she’d written Tommy and the way it curled and blackened when she burned it.

Their child would have been nearly four.

* * *

Shivering, swiping wet curls from her damp neck, Brigid finally ducked underneath their front door’s overhang. February had melted away like the last bit of dirty frost on the first warm day of the year, and the slate-gray spring rain clouds that arrived in its place hung heavy above. Brigid had hoped to make it home before they cracked, but she’d dawdled — consumed with thoughts of Ada, playing out dozens of scenarios between herself and Tommy, she didn’t realize she’d walked right past her home until she was already a block down and the rain lashed at her face.

She stomped her feet before turning the lock — it didn’t stick, freshly oiled and repaired from the raid — and shook out her coat before letting the door fall shut behind her. Inside, the front room was dim, lit only by a low fire crackling in the hearth, and she kicked off her sooty, rain-stained boots beside her father’s.

His voice carried from the kitchen. “_Bridie?_”

Odd — though his shift wouldn’t begin for another hour yet, her father had slipped into a habit of taking his dinner at the Black Swan once or twice a week, and usually on the evenings she closed up Thompson’s. Yet this evening, something sizzled on the hob, wafting in from the kitchen along with his call and causing her stomach to grumble.

“It’s me, da,” she called back. He was muttering under his breath to someone else, and the sound of it twisted her face into a frown. “Who’s here?”

Brigid slipped in her stockings on the polished floor as she deposited her dirty boots by the fire, hanging her coat on the far end of the mantle to dry. The window’s draft swept over her damp neck and blouse, chattering her teeth, and Brigid set about neatening her wet hair, twirling loose curls up and out of her face. A flicker of irritation heated her cheeks — she was hardly in a state to welcome guests.

Brigid passed through to the kitchen before her father could answer and found him stood at the hob, flipping a thick cut of salted beef. James Murphy was dressed as if he’d gone into town — despite typically spending his days sleeping off his shift and puttering around the house — as was his guest. The younger man escaped her recognition; tall and thin, he had dark auburn hair and pale, freckled cheeks. He twisted the cap in his hands, rested on their kitchen table, and regarded her with the same surprise with which she met him.

Something about the turn of his nose was familiar, but Brigid couldn’t place it.

Instead, she stepped forward, proffering a chilled hand to him. “Apologies for barging in. I’m Brigid — have we met?”

Brigid’s father turned to them, the wooden spatula clattering against the sideboard, and the man’s gaze slid, just briefly, to his. “I’m Jack,” he said, taking her hand. His was smooth, lacking the calluses that marked so many of the working men in Small Heath — he sounded like Belfast, like her father when he had too much to drink.

“Jack?” Brigid’s lips parted in surprise, something falling into place —

“You don’t recognize him?” Her father, almost chuckling, crossed to the table and clapped a hand on the man’s slim shoulder, which he’d hunched as if embarrassed. “Your cousin.”

Jack_._

“Oh!” A surprised laugh escaped Brigid’s lips, and then, arms outstretched, she was moving forward to meet him as he stood, wrapping him in a hug. “I hardly did!”

_Jack_ — she’d not known her cousin by sight, as many years as it had been, but a dread slinked down Brigid’s spine and pooled like spilled milk in her belly when he squeezed her in his arms, nearly lifting her off her feet.

She hadn’t known him — but would Inspector Campbell?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hidy ho! i hoped you liked this chapter - i'd love to hear what you think. not to be a baby, but my depression's been kicking my ass recently, so it's always lovely to hear all of your thoughts and favorite bits and lines!
> 
> come hang with me on [tumblr](https://aryaflint.tumblr.com/)?
> 
> this will (likely) be the last update before the holidays, so happy times to you and yours! <3


	8. viii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh hello, hope you're enjoying the time of year where no one has any idea what day of the week it is bc i sure am?

Jack’s arms tightened around her one last time, and he was so much taller he crushed her into his sharp breastbone. When he’d finally deposited her back onto solid ground, Brigid sucked in a deep breath as she stared up at him — how could she have missed it?

The war had passed like an entire era, divvying up everyone’s lives into _before _and_ after_, and yet, even _before_, it had been ages since the Murphys last visited Belfast. Brigid had been fifteen or just past it, still round in the cheeks, and Patrick had been tall and flushed and alive.

In front of her now, Jack’s eyes and hair were different, and he was taller, certainly, but the lines of his face were Patrick’s. The devious upturn of his nose was Patrick’s. And the wide grin on his face — _God_, her heart ached — was Patrick’s.

“Well, you are a sight for sore eyes,” she said, lungs empty.

It was truer than she could have ever explained, even if he was older than her brother had ever been allowed to grow. Jack had been three years Patrick’s senior, and so the man in front of her now was past thirty and the corners of his eyes lined with good humor.

“And you.” Jack stepped back, curious — Brigid wondered what he saw in her face, whether it was his Auntie Eleanor staring back and tugging at his heartstrings. “You were a girl the last time I saw you, and yet here you are — engaged, I hear?”

Warmth flushed Brigid’s cheeks, and she reached up to tuck a damp, escaped curl behind her ear — the diamond of Tommy’s ring winked in the low kitchen light. “Yes. I don’t think I ever — it was just before the war. Sorry, I don’t think I remembered to write.”

But Jack winked. “Ma will be thrilled.”

They all shared a laugh at her Auntie Ellen’s expense — it went without saying that her engagement would be the talk of Belfast if Ellen was wont to prattle on about her brother’s children as eagerly as she did her own.

“Speaking of — she didn’t write! Or she did, and you” — Brigid pointed at her father, who raised his brows like a boy caught with his hand in the biscuit tin — “didn’t tell me!”

“Thought it might be a nice surprise.” Flushing, her father turned back to the beef browning on the hob.

“I’m to blame,” Jack said. He pressed a hand to his chest, and the other reached out, conciliatory, to cup Brigid’s damp shoulder. “I’m the one who wrote to Uncle Jem asking if he could house me.”

“Well, what are you doing here, then?” Brigid grinned, patting his hand before letting it fall.

She felt warm, loose, almost breathless with relief after the drama and heartache of the day — her father, ever solemn, even smiled over his shoulder. Laughter came easy with her Irish family, who’d only recently reckoned with the grief that haunted every moth-eaten corner of the Murphy home.

“Looking for work.” Jack ruffled the dark auburn hair at the back of his head, soft and curled from the damp spring air. “Nothing back home ever seems to stick — thought I’d try my luck in Birmingham.”

Outside, rain lashed at the cobblestones and windowpanes, and Brigid, now that the surprise of finding her cousin in her kitchen had passed, bustled around the kitchen, collecting linen napkins and cutlery to set the table.

“Quite a few shops are hiring along the way to my work,” she said, passing Jack a short stack of rattling china plates — Polly had passed on one of the Shelbys’ many sets upon learning of what they’d lost in Campbell’s raid. “Perhaps we could walk together and inquire?”

It was too easy to pretend that this was normal, that she simply meant to ask after her dear cousin. Other questions burgeoned — had he followed the long shadow of Inspector Campbell across the sea to investigate and plot? Were his motivations nefarious, his actions in the name of his murdered baby brother? — and Brigid pursed her lips to hold them in, not willing to spoil the evening.

Jack, well-trained by his mother, set three sides of their old table, which creaked underneath the weight of the china. “That would be much appreciated.”

“Perfect!” Brigid beamed. Her nervous fingers busied themselves with depositing the tea kettle onto the back of the hob next to a pot of unevenly chopped potatoes, returning to the cabinet for sugar cubes. “What kind of tea do you — ”

“I can take care of the tea,” her father interrupted. A ruddy hand clapped her on the shoulder; when Brigid met his gaze, it was almost sad. He didn’t have much occasion to wear his suit, and it always reminded her of her mother’s funeral. “I thought we’d put Jack in Patrick’s room. Would you be able to make it up before supper?”

Brigid froze, hands white-knuckled around the tin of sugar cubes — before she’d had a chance to comprehend his statement, she’d shrugged away from his touch, and now her skin felt scalded.

_Of course_, they would put him in Patrick’s room. They didn’t have anywhere else, and they couldn’t put family on the sofa. They _certainly _couldn’t ask him to rent a room. It made sense. It —

“Yes,” she forced out, unsticking her heavy tongue. “I’ll do that now.”

Turning to the kitchen worktop, Brigid felt dazed, hot and unwell in her rain-damp work clothes, as if a fever had rushed in and fogged up her head. She bit down sharply, metallic blood stinging in her mouth.

Ignoring the shuffle of Jack’s boots, the _clink_ of the iron pan on the hob as her father moved it to the side — Brigid was halfway up the stairs to the first landing before she realized she hadn’t excused herself. Below, they had resumed the conversation she’d interrupted only minutes before — _factory’s always hiring — reckon I’ll try a shop or something first, though — can’t blame you for that _—

Something oppressive and sickly crept underneath her collar, and she sucked in a deep, grounding breath. Above, dim moonlight streaked through the second landing window, fat raindrop shadows dancing down the stairs as she climbed higher.

The Peaky boys Tommy sent after Campbell’s raid had rehung Patrick’s bedroom door, affixing its hinges to the doorjamb and sanding down the splintered bit near the handle where a copper’s boot had made contact. Pale, reedy Eddie Lovelock closed the door softly to test it and crossed himself when the lock successfully latched.

Brigid’s hand had trembled over the knob after he left, unable to turn it, unable to finally face the bedroom she’d kept tightly locked for over a year.

She knew what she would find. Goose feathers and torn bedsheets; old cotton shirts and woolen trousers; piano workbooks and scattered cards and cufflinks — exactly as the coppers had left it, hardly messier than it had been when Patrick was flush and alive. Putting it back together wouldn’t bring him back.

Back when she was thin as a boy and the smartest girl in her class, her mother used to tell her she was too brave for her own good. But Brigid hadn’t been brave enough to clean up her brother’s bedroom.

Now, her hand, pale like a phantom, met the cool brass knob and stilled.

She wanted —

Cursing herself, Brigid swiped the tears that had already spilled over her bottom lashes and dripped down her heated cheeks, and focused on the rain, on the painfully normal conversation that floated up the stairs.

She wanted her brother.

Patrick’s Bible, dogeared and stained, had fallen facedown on the floor next to his old, wrought-iron bed.

The world was cruel to take him so soon, so violently. _I can’t even look at you without thinking about the bullet I watched go through his brains_, Tommy had said, that black night outside her mother’s church. Would she have known him by sight when they tossed him into his unmarked grave in Flanders?

They’d never had a proper funeral in Birmingham — no money, no family but her, no body — but the church had a memorial mass for all of the parish boys lost in France. The priest had said it was God’s will, that in time, they would _understand_ and _find peace_ — but what kind of God would take Patrick, who had so much good left to do, who had always tasked himself with making everyone smile?

The part of her that was wholly Patrick — as if his spirit had returned home when his body hadn’t and taken up host in her heart — wanted her switchblade in hand, to curse andto cut. But below, laughter echoed, and Brigid forced herself to shake her head.

He might have almost looked like her brother and even smiled the same, but Jack’s elation sounded so little like Patrick’s.

The sigh was heavy on her lips, and Brigid stooped on sore knees to collect her brother’s Bible, the torn pages of a piano workbook, an old school slate. Righting his trunk, she dumped the load in her arms inside, forcing herself to be unceremonious. She knew she couldn’t stop to consider each item — to reminisce over the time her brother had shined _that _pair of shoes before his first (and only) date with Kitty Jurossi, or how she’d taught herself to stack a game of cards with _that_ faded old deck now scattered around the floor.

Doing so would take all night, would leave her sobbing and crumbled in a heap on Patrick’s bedroom floor, and they had a guest who would likely enjoy an early night.

Heaving his mattress back into the frame, Brigid stripped it of the dusty, ripped sheets. Well-trained, she made quick work of it — fresh linen sheets, fluffed pillows, a soft spring quilt. She righted the sticky oil lantern on the bedside table, dug through the small drawer. A broken fountain pen and stained, inky journal; a picture of their mother, creased and worn; a musty, half-empty pack of cheap cigarettes; and a love letter from Rosie Edwards joined the rest of _Patrick Murphy_ — proof that he had lived and breathed and existed — in his old trunk.

Ephemera — all of it worthless, and all of it cherished.

The trunk groaned and protested as Brigid hauled it across the landing to her bedroom, trailing goose feathers. She could have left it, could have trusted that Auntie Ellen raised her son to believe in privacy, but Brigid — well, she was the only one who could bear to speak Patrick’s name anymore, and so his memories would be hers, now.

Stood at the apex of the stairs, Brigid found herself leaning against the old papered wall for support. “Bedroom’s ready,” she called.

“_Thanks, love.”_ Her father’s voice was quiet, gravelly, scraping up the stairwell. It was the sound of porcelain under Inspector Campbell’s shined shoes.

She should have joined them. They had a guest, family —

_Worthless family, _Campbell had growled, _Belfast _and_ Dublin._ Brigid hardly knew her Dublin family — second cousins and uncles once-removed of her mother, Byrnes and O’Malleys and Maguires, people she only knew as branches on the old emerald and ivory quilt embroidered with their family tree.

Cloying perfume still clung to the floorboards of her bedroom, and Brigid, swamped under a sudden, frothing wave of exhaustion, forced open the small window. The gap, just a few centimeters wide, was enough for the earthy scent of rain to sweep through and clear it out. A waterfall of rain rushed over the window eave, filling her senses, and Brigid let herself curl up at the foot of her bed, knobbly knees pulled to her chest like when she was a girl, the entire world hidden behind the slate-gray clouds and sooty rain.

Her cheeks burned, and the hot tears streaked down Brigid’s cheeks and jaw and neck, dampening her old skirt when she buried her face in her knees.

* * *

Sat at the furthest most desk from the betting shop’s door, Brigid was meant to be counting the immense pile of pence sat in front of her. The bronze glinted in the soft morning light, which streamed in through the muggy windows, illuminating dust motes and settling on the scuffed wooden floor.

Yet, every creak and bang startled her into peering over the coins — Eddie dropping a cap full of banknotes and clinking coins onto the front desk; Lovelock bustling a disagreeable bettor out the door before Scudboat could get involved; Finn, cap askew, running in with an envelope in hand —

The door needed to be oiled, and it never opened to reveal Tommy.

_Fuck._ Brigid glanced down to find an indeterminate number of pence haphazardly pushed aside, a pair stuck underneath her drumming fingers, her progress lost.

Sighing, she pushed the pence together once more, but Ada’s words rang in her ears — _I thought you would understand _— even as she started anew.

Polly, sat at the side table across the room, poured over the day’s papers for news from the tracks, but every time Brigid looked up, she met Polly’s dark, lamplike eyes. The older woman was also on the lookout for Thomas Shelby — but would Polly give her the chance to speak to Tommy before she intercepted him at the door?

Brigid owed it to Ada — to the baby she herself had lost — to speak with him before Polly could convince him that the best course for Ada was a clandestine visit to a dark office backroom. She needed to catch him and remind him of who Freddie could be (who he _was_ when his head wasn’t stuck in some pamphlet-sized manifesto) before Polly could caution him that if Freddie didn’t come back, Ada’s life might be well and truly ruined.

Wasn’t the risk of ruin worth Ada’s chance at happiness?

_God_ — she’d found herself on her knees just the night before, murmuring underneath the low crackle of the fire downstairs and the unfamiliar shuffling across the silent landing, begging for Freddie to be led back to Small Heath.

The next time the door opened, cracking against the chipped wallpaper on a gust of wind, Tommy stepped through — capped, the lines of his suit fresh and sharp, his cheeks flushed from the sun. And Brigid’s fingers froze over the pence, her lips parting.

He looked golden, lovely, like he might simply be in a good mood and enjoying his day in a way that had eluded him since the war. He clapped Scudboat on the shoulder as he passed by, leaned in to listen to a tip from Jimmy Lovelock. Tommy must have found it agreeable, because he laughed, shaking Jimmy’s hand before moving further into the betting shop.

The heavy trace of a gaze raised the hairs on Brigid’s neck, and she looked up to find Polly staring at her. She quirked her brow, nodding to Tommy’s figure as he cut through the desks and black-coated men —

_Right._

Heat rose to Brigid’s cheeks as she stood, scratching out her numbers as she did. “Finn!”

The youngest Shelby, only a few feet away, skipped over. When she nodded at the coins on her assumed desk, he wilted before she could even speak. “Bridie — ”

“Nope — count ‘em up.” She pointed at her abandoned desk chair, a soft knitted scarf still looped through the top rail. “Don’t forget to write down your sums so you don’t forget.”

“But — ”

“No questions,” she said, voice clipped as her heart jumped to her throat. “Once you’re done, you can ask John if he has anything else to run.”

Huffing in defeat, Finn slumped over the desk, already sinking his smudged fingers into the pile of bronze pence, sliding them across the desk in groups of five.

Tommy had entered his office, taken a seat at his desk, and shaken out the _Birmingham Evening Dispatch. _Her reflection shifted in the murky office windows as she approached — distorted, pale even in the sun that streamed in through the front. That morning, she’d twisted up the heft of her hair into a clip at the crown of her head, but left the dark, delicate curls underneath to hang down her back. Brigid didn’t typically leave her hair down these days — as John had pointed out when she came in that morning and flushed under the curious stares.

But she had hoped it might remind Tommy of when they were younger, back when she could convince him of nearly anything with a well-timed flutter of her lashes and the sweep of curls over her shoulder. He’d always been fond of her hair, and even now, when they were both older and scarred, it was the first part of her he would undo when they fell into bed together.

She thought it might incite an affection, perhaps even indulgence.

This would be different, more difficult, than any prior request, but Brigid determined to _try_.

She gave him the courtesy of announcing her arrival, tapping on the open office door as she leaned against the doorjamb. A hand itched to twirl a curl around her finger, but the need to appear confident outweighed her nervous tic. At the sound of her knock, he looked up, cigarette drooping in his lips, and waved her in with an easy hand.

It was eerie, the semblance to the imaginings that had led her to walk straight past her front door only the night prior — it heartened her, in a deep, sorrowful part of her chest, that she still knew him so well.

“Hello, love.” Brigid swept her skirt in behind her before shutting the door, and the soft _snick_ encouraged him to fold his paper and fix her with his full attention.

His eyes were blue and soft, his gaze wriggling into the cracks of her heart.

Thick, heady tobacco smoke meandered up over his cheekbones as he exhaled and deposited the paper atop his scratched old desk. “How are you?”

Instead of letting her take the spare, cracked leather chair across the desk, Tommy urged her closer with a curl of his palm. When Brigid was near enough to feel the chill that still clung to his woolen suit, he took her hand in his — their twined fingers fell against his shoulder, and his chin brushed her knuckles as he looked up at her.

When was the last time he’d shown her such intimacy in public? It must have been before he went away to war, for since, they’d exchanged only brief touches outside the sanctity of his bedroom — fingers trailed over her shoulders when he approached from behind to peer over the ledgers; the curl of her hand around his arm when they walked across town; the brush of fingertips when he would hand over a top hat full of clinking coins.

Her motivation churned in her belly, welling up to her lips, and yet — Brigid shuddered to tell him, dreaded to speak it aloud lest he turned cold once more.

“I’m good,” she lied, voice low. “What about you?”

He looked almost boyish with a dark lock curling over his forehead, too young to have known so much violence and pain. The hand that wanted to curl in her hair now ached to reach out and neaten his windswept fringe.

“‘M good,” he murmured, and Brigid took the chance — when she tucked the flyaway strand back into place, his sinful eyelashes fluttered closed, just for a moment, before he fixed his eyes on her once more.

Her anxious lips betrayed her, charging ahead before his lovely eyes could distract her. “I have news — you may not like it.”

He would certainly not like it, but years with the Shelbys had taught her when tact was needed, for they had so little of it.

“What news, then?” Tommy quirked a brow.

Brigid knew that if she ran her fingers through his hair again, he would close his eyes, hum with contentment like a fat cat. It would hide her from his judgment, from the crack of anger that might flash in his eyes — but the entire shop of men was on the other side of a cloudy, glass-paned wall, and Brigid _didn’t_ want to feel any more vulnerable than she already did.

So, she trailed them over his shoulder under the guise of brushing lint from his pressed suit. “It’s about Ada.”

“She’s always a thorn in my side,” he said, chuckling. “What has she done now?”

Clearly, Tommy had expected her to laugh alongside him — and wasn’t she so good at that, mimicking his good humor? — but Brigid found herself unable to perform. Nausea clawed up her throat, acidic and hot.

The universe was so cruel to charge her with dampening his spirits when they were, these days, so rarely found.

“She’s…” Brigid trailed off, chewing the inside of her cheek, and it was only then that Tommy realized that the news would not be something to laugh off. His eyes darkened under his furrowed brow, fingers tightening around hers. “She’s pregnant, Tommy.”

His breath left him in a sharp exhale. “What?”

Boots falling heavy to the floor, Tommy straightened — the motion caused Brigid to shift back on her heels, rocking with nerves. “She’s — ”

“Whose is it?” All good humor had left him, now, and he stared up at her as if he couldn’t comprehend what she had said — as if he hadn’t known that Ada was sneaking off to meet some boy near the canals; as if they hadn’t all politely looked the other way to avoid tears and scorn.

Anxious blood coursed through Brigid’s veins, pounding in her ears, encouraging her to shift her weight again. _Freddie Thorne, your old friend, your Army bunkmate, the man you can’t stand _— “I don’t know.”

“You do.”

The bite of her teeth on the inside of her cheek was sharp, metallic blood flooding her mouth — he’d always known when she was lying, always too perceptive for his own good. “She should tell you, Tommy.”

“Then, why are _you_ telling me?” Confusion was sewn into the lines of his face, as strange and unfamiliar on him as another man’s coat.

He moved to stand, attempted to drop her hand, but Brigid instead clasped it in both of hers as if to beg. “Tommy, Polly knows, and she wants Ada to get rid of it — ”

“She will if she has any sense — ”

“But, Ada…” Brigid’s eyes burned, brimming with hot, traitorous tears, and when she blinked, they leaked out. “Ada wants to keep it.”

This wasn’t to plan — Thomas Shelby was a man of discipline and action, trained in the Small Heath gutters and the French trenches. He had no time for tears and had stated as much.

“Ada’s a child.” He pursed his lips around the words as if they were poison, slipping from her grasp as he stood.

“She’s twenty-one, Tommy, and she wants to keep _her baby_.” Tommy might have drawn away, but Brigid tucked herself close to his chest against, dark curls spilling over her shoulders. Tommy’s eyes traced them, even if he wouldn’t meet her gaze. “She deserves a chance — _they_ deserve a chance.”

He might have been a statue — solid, unmoving, only the muscle in his jaw jumping as he considered her. But then he slipped out of her grip again, his fingers leaving only a chill where they had been. “Where is she?”

“Tommy — ”

“Brigid.” His hands found her again, this time around her shoulders, and he fixed her with blue eyes that were clear and hard. “Bridie, you need to tell me where she is.”

A miserable, tear-stained frown tugged at Brigid’s lips, and when she attempted to close her hands around his lapels and hold him close, he stepped away.

He crossed to the door, and the sight of his turned back opened her lips. “She’s at the pictures.”

He nodded, just once, without turning to look at her, and then he was striding through the betting shop the same way he’d come. This time, he dodged every outstretched hand, ducked around runners and bettors and desks. A heavy, wretched dread clawed at Brigid’s throat, rocking in her stomach; she watched the long lines of his suit stretch as he reached for his the shop’s front door, and then he tossed it open, stepping out into the day.

The door slamming jerked Brigid out of her head. She swiped at the tears clinging to her lower lashes, sniffing, hoping to hide the emotion that marred her face before she returned to the shop proper. But she had always worn her heart on her sleeve, and so when she’d finally latched Tommy’s office door behind her, Brigid was distinctly, horribly aware of the averted eyes.

All but Polly’s. She sat, ramrod straight, and watched Brigid with raised brows, her dark eyes hard and calling. And once Brigid was so close to her that she could see the fine wrinkles around Polly’s lips, Brigid almost collapsed, bracing her hands on the desk at Polly’s side.

“I don’t know what she expected.” Though she hadn’t yet revealed herself to be either friend or foe, Polly nevertheless reached out, birdlike fingers patting Brigid’s knuckles.

Underneath the general din of the shop, Brigid groaned. “She thought I could make him see reason.”

“There’s no reason to be found here,” Polly said, voice wry, as she lifted her strong, herbal tea to her lips. “Either way, she’s fucked.”

Brigid dragged a nearby chair across the scuffed floor until she was at Polly’s side once more, falling into it with a sigh. Polly’s eyes glinted as she returned her teacup to its saucer, and Brigid followed its path, something in her chest turning — she realized, suddenly, that she wanted nothing more than a hug, even though they might be on the precipice of a serious disagreement.

“Don’t you think she deserves a chance, Pol? And,” Brigid lowered her voice to a whisper, “the baby? I — ” Choking, Brigid pressed a fist over her trembling lips and rounded her shoulders to lean closer to Polly.

Polly didn’t scoff, but her eyes narrowed as if the only reason she didn’t was to spare Brigid’s feelings. “That’s why she came to you — knew you’d feel sorry for her.”

“You don’t?”

“Of course, I do.” Polly’s brows neared her hairline, and, as if they were having a conversation over the weather or something equally innocuous, she returned to her newspaper. “But she knew the consequences when she started sneaking around with this boy, and now she’s reaped what she’s sown.”

Polly might not have scoffed, but Brigid did — loud, unexpected, and she rose to her feet before she had a chance to think. If her sudden movement surprised Polly, the older woman didn’t show it. The hot, vicious emotion Tommy planted in her chest reared its head, blackening her lungs. Brigid found she could hardly breathe.

“Did I not?” she hissed, leaning down until she was level with Polly’s guarded eyes. Her fingers trembled on the edge of the gritty desk. “Did I not reap what I sowed, too? How could you _say_ that?”

“You don’t have to like it, but it’s the truth.” Her lips thinned, flattening into a line. “You know as well as I that you got the better deal — not having to decide one way or the other. So, do not presume to know what’s best for her.”

As she straightened her spine, Brigid schooled her watery expression. She was quite certain she hadn’t been so nauseous since she woke up and wretched into the sink basin a fortnight after Tommy shipped out — back when the only grief she knew was the gaping wound her mother had left and her only fear whether Tommy would be home for Christmas.

But that nausea had been all-consuming, heavy in her belly as she wandered around in a daze and counted up the weeks since she could remember bleeding.

This wave came and went like a boat’s wake against the wall of the Cut — rocking up and easing down in quick succession, crashing back into itself until only a small ripple was left.

Brigid sucked a deep breath into her belly, swallowing the lump in her throat, and turned on a heel to stride away. She didn’t feel Polly’s gaze on her back as she cut through the desks and runners and dusty, sooty men.

Brigid had stopped herself from screaming; from clawing out those dark, knowing eyes; from telling her that she might have named her daughter Elizabeth, if she’d only had the fucking _chance_; and so, she hoped that Polly, at the very least, had the decency to look down in shame at what she’d said.

Finn looked up with a grin, sliding another five pence across the desk as she approached — either Brigid was better at hiding the swell of emotion in her chest than she expected, or he was doing a remarkable job of ignoring it. “Two hundred and thirty-five!”

“Thanks, Finn.” He hadn’t finished, but only a small pile of bronze coins was left where she’d given him a mountain. Brigid forced a smile. “Go on, check with John.”

He hopped up on light feet, a _thank you!_ on his lips, and Brigid fell into the chair, knees weak, heart somewhere in her throat. The desk scratched at her elbows through the thin knit cardigan, her loose curls tickling her neck — her skin was burning, too sensitive, as the morning crawled over her.

_You know as well as I that you got the better deal._

Of course, she knew. She’d been saved from shame and disgrace, from the subtle embarrassment of popping out a squalling baby less than nine months after a small wedding. But she’d been robbed, too, of the joy and the opportunity and of a little babe that had all the best parts of her and Tommy — of that _love._

Brigid’s shoulders shook with the force of holding in a sob, and she ducked her head, a trembling hand braced against her forehead as the other slid five pence at a time across the desk.

* * *

By the time Brigid ducked out of the betting shop to meet Jack at the mouth of Garrison Court, a light mist had settled over Small Heath. She’d twisted up her long, tangled curls — a fresh start to the day — and they now frizzed around her ears and fringe. She could have borrowed an umbrella for the afternoon, but the damp was bracing, gray to match her spirit.

Her overheated skin still crawled with the force in Tommy’s eyes, the poison that dripped from Polly’s painted lips.

_You don’t have to like it, but it’s the truth._

The Shelby matriarch had never held her tongue, for better or for worse — was Brigid herself simply too weak where matters of the heart were concerned?

Underneath an umbrella of his own, Jack looked out of place, his hair bright and his shoes shined, next to the billowing smoke of the B.S.A. He smiled as she approached. “Ah! I worried I was in the wrong spot.”

“Apologies,” Brigid said, forcing a smile on her taut cheeks. “Took longer to finish up than I anticipated.”

But Jack smiled, and Brigid wrapped her arm through the crook of his elbow, encouraging him to fall into step beside her. Though he held the umbrella high enough to cover them both, Brigid was so much shorter that the mist snuck under and settled on her warm cheeks. She held her bag and packed supper close to her chest but sucked in a deep breath, relishing the cool breeze, trying to release the tension that had found a home in her shoulders.

“This is the factory, then? Where Uncle Jem works?” A gloved hand gestured across Brigid to the soot-blackened building and the burnt orange that flashed behind its windows.

“Birmingham Small Arms, yeah.” Brigid spared it a glance, the bricks as familiar as her own home —

Ahead, in time with a metallic _clang_ inside the factory, the Garrison’s side door burst open. The door fell, old and heavy as it was, shuddering against the building as if the person behind it had no hands with which to catch it.

Indeed, a moment passed, and Grace emerged. Her blonde hair, curled and neat, glinted under the weak sun, and she huffed as she swept it over her shoulder, balancing a crate of empty, clinking liquor bottles precariously in both hands. She huffed and wobbled as she readjusted the crate so she could walk uninhibited.

Jack hummed, his brogue low under the din of the street. “He’s said only the night shift is hiring — paint shop — ”

Cursing, Grace stooped to deposit the crate with the others — bins of stinking rubbish, broken crates, shattered bottles and old ale casks that would be picked up the next morning.

“ — with any luck, I won’t end up there.”

“No, I would hope not,” Brigid murmured, almost absentminded, watching as Grace swiped her hands over her pristine apron. “It’s rough work even for the best of them.”

Grace the Barmaid had done a remarkable job of fitting in behind the bar at the Garrison, pulling pints with ease and ribbing the more uncouth patrons, winning them all over with her voice, thick and smooth as honey. And yet, Brigid reflected, there were moments where she gave herself away, moments that spoke louder than any sweet tune — moments like just then, when her posh, skinny arms struggled to carry a crate of empty bottles.

Brigid’s met Grace’s blue eyes as they passed by the Garrison proper — the barmaid inclined her head, and Brigid returned the favor, smoothing a hand over the stomach of her plain cotton blouse.

“So,” Jack trailed off, breaking the silence that Brigid had let fall, “do tell me about yourself. I only remember you bugging Granda and brawling with Pat, but you don’t strike me as a fighter now.”

The weight lifted from her lungs, and Brigid gave a breathless laugh as she adjusted her hat against the wind.

The question was painfully elementary, almost on-the-nose — what were long-lost cousins, now grown, meant to know of one another? They might have been strangers, despite the similar arch to their eyebrows and the matching freckles on their noses.

“Patrick had a talent for bringing out the worst in me — I don’t have anyone to brawl with these days.” A sad smile quirked her lips, and Brigid focused on the weak sunlight that dripped through the thin gray clouds and how it glittered in the mist. “I like to play piano and sew like Mum used to, but mostly, I just work.”

“And where is it we’re going now?” He leaned down, lowering the umbrella as they ducked underneath a sagging shop awning.

Jostled, Brigid clutched her bag closer to her chest. “Thompson’s Tailoring and Haberdashery — I’ve worked there since Da went to war.”

“And you still do?” Jack sounded surprised, his eyes falling to her.

Brigid had doubted her traditional Belfast family would understand a woman’s desire to work outside of the home, and yet the question still brought a warm flush to her cheeks. “I enjoy it, truly. I’d go mad if I had to sit at home and gossip with the neighborhood ladies all day.”

Though this was the truth, Brigid’s aversion to idleness only served as a friendly veneer for their financial situation. Without her income, her father’s foreman wages — though recently increased — were hardly enough to keep their house and put food on the table. Her mother had taught her to scrimp and save, and her father to value what they had, and perhaps it was selfish, but —

Amid the poverty of Small Heath, Brigid enjoyed having her own money to splurge on fine silk threads or freshly milled wheat at the market.

“And will you keep working after you’re married?”

Together, they dodged a pair of barefoot children mucking about in a rain puddle, and Brigid winced at the sound of their mother’s bark.

“Perhaps.”

In truth, she hadn’t considered she wouldn’t — marrying Tommy meant marrying the Peaky Blinders, and whether they paid her by the hour or not, she would no doubt continue to spend the bulk of her time counting shillings, mending wounds, and balancing the safe.

“Will your fiancé allow that? Does he fancy himself a modern man?” Though she kept her eyes focused ahead, searching shop windows for _HIRING_ signs, Brigid could hear the smile in his voice.

Brigid couldn’t help the laugh she gave. “I do not know if I would go so far as to say that Tommy is modern.”

“Then he indulges you?”

Once, before the war, she would have blushed at the very suggestion, and yet the answer would surely have been a resounding _yes_. Did he still?

She considered it, sorting through each month that had passed since he returned — _I’ll not talk about this with you, and that’s final_, and _Have you considered it’s not your job to make everyone happy?_, and _I don’t need your help._

And she remembered each chair he pulled out for her and every door he opened; the one time she convinced him to attend mass with her, even if he spent the majority of the time whispering rude things about the priest in her ear; the ride out to Johnson’s brook and the taste of apples and jam on his lips.

Though something unfamiliar and uneasy twisted in her belly, Brigid finally said, “I suppose he does — ”

_“Oi, Bridie!”_

Stumbling to stop, Brigid cast her eyes around the crowded street to find John crossing over to them, the day’s newspaper and a bouquet of paper-wrapped daisies clutched in hand. He held his chin high as he approached, the razors in his cap's peak glinting in the weak light, and fixed Jack with an imperious stare as he planted himself by Brigid’s side.

“Who’s this?” John said, gesturing with the bouquet.

Jack, as if startled into action by John’s hardened eyes, held out a gloved hand, the picture of gentility. “Jack Doyle — Brigid’s cousin.”

“He’s just come in from Belfast,” Brigid supplied, smiling up at John, “looking for employment.”

They were both quite tall, and their eyes met over Brigid’s head for a long moment before John clasped Jack’s hand in his own, tight, business-like. “Nice to meet ya,” he muttered around the toothpick in his mouth.

Frustration curled around Brigid’s lungs, forcing her to bite her lip to not scold John for his temper, for his distrust of strangers.

When he withdrew from the handshake, Jack flexed his fingers. “You must be Brigid’s fiancé — Thomas?”

“No, no, no.” Heat crept up Brigid’s neck and colored her cheeks as John scuffed his boot on the cobblestones beneath them. “God, John, where are your manners? This is John, Tommy’s brother.”

“A pleasure, regardless,” Jack said, his voice genial. The smile that curled on his lips was, for a moment, so remarkably like Patrick that Brigid’s heart ached.

She forced herself to look at John and instead let her curious eyes fall to the bouquet of daisies. “What are you doing out this way, John?”

“Alice’s birthday’s tomorrow, yeah?” He considered the flowers, ducking his head as if embarrassed — an unfamiliar show of reservation from cocksure John. “Thought some flowers might spruce up the house since we aren’t celebrating ’til the weekend.”

Brigid’s cheeks scrunched into a smile, and his burned red when she squinted up at him through the mist. “That’s really sweet of you, John — she’ll love them!”

And then, turning to pat Jack’s arm, still twined with hers, she said, “You should come! Sunday next, we’re celebrating a birthday. I’ll be baking, you can have your… I don’t know, your fortune told, perhaps — everyone will be there, even Da.”

“I’d love to,” Jack said, smiling at John once more. “Pleased to meet you, John Shelby.”

John shifted his weight, adjusting his cap, chewing on his toothpick. Instead of meeting Jack’s gaze, he said, “Yeah, yeah — say, you were looking for a job? Paper’s got the classifieds on the back.”

He held out the damp newspaper between them like an odd peace offering, and Jack considered it with a raised brow before reaching out. “You don’t want it?”

He swiped his hand through the air, already dismissing the question. “Nah — already got my thruppence worth.” Then, with a tip of his cap, John was striding down the cobblestoned lane once more, tall and black-capped in the midday mist.

Brigid and Jack were left in an odd sort of silence, the rustling newspaper between Jack’s hands the only sound.

“He seems a charming sort.”

Jack’s voice was uncertain, and Brigid knew he was attempting to spare her feelings. Rolling her eyes, Brigid tugged him forward down the lane once more; the tension between them snapped like a rubber band.

“He’s a wanker,” she said, and Jack snorted. “But that’s about as much of a polite exchange as you’ll ever get from him.”

The mist had finally let up to reveal bright sun through the heavy, slate-gray clouds. Without asking, Brigid retrieved the damp, wrinkled newspaper from Jack’s hands and flipped to the crowded page of advertisements as he snapped their umbrella shut.

“The milliners in Saltley are hiring.” Heavy black print filled each block, and Brigid hoped she wouldn’t one day need a magnifying glass to read the paper like Polly. “The butcher in Sparkbrook, too — that isn’t so far at all. Da drinks in the pub there.”

Jack winked, nudging her with a knobbly elbow. “Is the pub hiring?”

A laugh bubbled up on Brigid’s lips, and she didn’t spare him another glance — grinning was one thing, but watching him laugh was too haunting. “You’ll have to ask them yourself.”

As they drew closer to the dress shop, Brigid recounted each relevant advertisement to him, all of them boasting _HIRING_ in big, bold letters, at once attempting to stand out and yet blending in among the dozens of others.

They shared a long laugh at the thought of Jack working in a corset shop, and then, to Brigid’s surprise, they had reached Thompson’s. The cobblestoned streets from Small Heath had passed in a pleasant, familiar blur — a welcome change from the dusty betting shop, the icy wall that held back Tommy’s emotions and the judgment in Polly’s eyes.

Jack squeezed her hand, thanking her for the brief tour of the city, and tucked his hands in his pockets to turn back in the direction they’d come.

The bell tingled over Brigid’s head as she slipped inside the foggy glass door, smoothing the damp curls at her temples. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Thompson!”

The round, kindly woman peered around the corner from the backroom, straight pins perched between her lips. “Afternoon, dear — oh, goodness.”

The pins spilled out, and they shared a laugh as she stooped to collect them, bemoaning her aching back all the while. “Mind the till, dear, would you?” She paused, considering. “And it would be lovely if you could finish up the embroidery on that silk number Miss Dearborn keeps asking after. It’s — well, you know where to find it.”

The old woman’s affection was familiar, welcome, and Brigid felt at home in the crowded, musty shop. She made for the rickety old till and the front counter, littered with scraps of thread and pincushions, and tossed the newspaper onto the oaken top —

_Damn_ — so much for Jack’s job search. The crowded classifieds page glared up at her, _HIRING, HIRING, FOR HIRE_ on display.

Brigid pried open the sticky bottom drawer, delicate fingers navigating loose threads and fine emerald and ivory silks. Upon donation, the collar had been dyed a horrible mint from poor washing, and Brigid had spent hours prying out the old thread and refreshing the dress with lovely, cream-colored vines — slow-moving work, and yet much less tedious than hemming skirt after skirt.

The newspaper rustled, perfectly in the way, as she arranged the dress upon the countertop, and Brigid noted the opposing page — _NEW OPPORTUNITIES IN ACCOUNTING_ advertised a six-month correspondence accounting course from London.

Curious, she smoothed the paper, folded it neatly, and tucked it in her bag for later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, please please let me know what you think! i'm so grateful for all of the kudos, subscriptions, and bookmarks, but nothing motivates me like hearing what y'all have to say!
> 
> and come hang with me on [tumblr](https://aryaflint.tumblr.com/) if you like :)


	9. ix.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the chapter lengths just keep growing and growing, oh my

A damp, cool breeze followed Brigid into Number Six, sneaking under the heavy hem of her skirt and chattering her teeth. Spring might have been on the way, but with the hot sun below the horizon, winter gnashed its teeth one last time. A low fire crackled in the hearth, illuminating the parlor with a soft glow, and sat in front of it, the shadows long on the cut of her cheekbones, was Ada.

“Hello, love.” Brigid kept her voice low as she moved forward to cup a hand over the crown of Ada’s head, pressing a kiss to her temple. “How are you feeling?”

A redundant question — Ada’s pale, tearstained cheeks indicated her confrontation with Tommy had gone poorly.“Bad. Pol’s in the kitchen — she wants to talk to you.”

Brigid’s gaze darted to the kitchen, the thin light that fell over the threshold. Within, china tinkled, and steam hissed. Despite the utter and complete misery on her face, Ada forced the hint of a smile.

“I think she wants to apologize,” Ada whispered. “She’d already told me what happened, and I told her she was a right bitch.”

Brigid huffed what might have passed for a laugh, had her chest not felt like it had been ripped open and her heart torn right out. She didn’t need an apology from Polly, who’d been as much of a surrogate mother to Brigid as she had been to her niece and nephews. That Ada had been forced to speak in her defense — _Ada_, who should have been the focus of all their concern — was salt to the wound.

Regardless, she pressed another quick kiss to Ada’s damp forehead before tiptoeing away to the kitchen. She found Polly, black hair loose and tousled, organizing a burnished silver tea tray — sugar, cream, and the porcelain teapot painted with yellow and orange flowers at the center of three delicate teacups.

“Is one of those for me?” Voice soft, Brigid leaned against the doorjamb, arms crossed loosely over her stomach. The satin of her blouse was still cool from the night outside.

Polly glanced up, startled, her nervous fingers rattling a teacup in its saucer. At the sight of Brigid, she released a heavy sigh, deflating. “Yes, I was hoping so.”

Without asking, Brigid dug through the cluttered cupboard for three linen tea napkins, each of them embroidered in her neat stitches. There was quite a bit she wanted to say, but her heart had taken up host in her throat; the silence between them was charged, waiting to be broken. Polly fidgeted with the napkins, straightening them with spindly fingers, before looking up, the wrinkles at the edges of her dark eyes pronounced.

“I owe you an apology,” she said, voice clipped. Her gaze dropped to the tray, where she nudged the sugar bowl until it was equidistance from the teapot as the cream. “So, here it is: I’m sorry.”

A small, sad smile wavered on Brigid’s lips. “I’m sorry, too.”

Polly’s brow furrowed when she looked up, almost in disbelief. “What do you have to apologize for?”

“I baited you — ”

“Hogwash.” Polly scoffed, reaching out to clutch Brigid’s hand. Hers was still warm from handling the teapot. “I knew the way it would make you feel, and I said it anyway. _I’m _sorry.”

And Polly Gray had never been one for apologies — they stuck in her mouth like toffee — but if her first had been requisite, the second was genuine.

She and Brigid were of a height, but as Polly’s dark eyes softened, Brigid felt distinctly like a little girl, fragile and humming with an emotion she didn’t recognize. Her heart was heavy, thumping in her ears, and then, before she could stop them, tears spilled over and down her cool cheeks.

Polly tutted, shushed. Her warm hands wrapped around Brigid’s slim, shaking shoulders, and her fingers found the messy chignon of curls to encourage Brigid to tuck her face into her neck.

“_God_, Pol, I thought I was all right.” Gasping, Brigid bit her lip, trying to muffle her sob — how horrible of her to cry when Ada was dealing with so much in the very next room. “I hadn’t thought of — it’s been years since I let it bother me, but him being back… I — ”

Brigid had spent the better part of four years as if nothing had ever happened. She’d repressed the memories of the blood on her hands, and the cold; the morning sickness and the mourning of a baby she’d hardly known was hers before God took it. It was a sick talent — burying grief under the trimmings and trappings of everyday responsibilities — but one that had kept her working and eating and sleeping. It had saved her.

Until Tommy — the father of her _child_ — returned, scarred and hollow-cheeked and haunted, to tear those walls down. He’d dug right through like the sapper he was, a silent specter of grief, to rip open wounds she wouldn’t let fester.

“Oh, sweet girl,” Polly murmured, smoothing a hand through Brigid’s hair, “have you spoken about it? Truly?”

Squeezing her eyes shut, Brigid let herself sink into the warmth of Polly’s embrace — if she ignored the herbal, earthy scent of Polly’s hair, she could almost imagine it was her mother who held her. Eleanor Murphy had always run a hand through her daughter’s unruly curls when Brigid was upset.

“No.” The single syllable sliced at Brigid’s lungs, cracked in the silent kitchen, and she sunk deeper into Polly. “Not since I told him. I — I wasn’t kind, and he left. It’s easier to… not talk about it.”

Polly had other plans — she nudged Brigid’s chin, encouraging her to look up and meet her eyes, and Brigid found them kind. “_This_ is easier?”

Brigid’s bottom lip stung where she bit it, her teeth sharp; the pain kept her chin from wobbling, held back a fresh wave of tears. It was hard to look at the older woman, in the same way that it was hard to face the truth.

“I know Thomas Shelby,” she continued, nodding just once. Brigid thought her eyes might have glistened. “I _know_ him, Brigid, and so do you. He will bury it all so deep you’ll never find it. The only chance both of you have at working through this is together. It’ll hurt, yes, but — you’re _already_ hurting, love.”

Brigid hiccuped again, and though Polly’s arms were still wrapped around her, the turn of her lips stern, Brigid’s tongue was heavy, the words stuck somewhere in her throat beside her pounding heart.

“Promise me you’ll talk with him, Bridie,” Polly was saying, her fingers soft on Brigid’s chin. “It doesn’t have to be right away, but you need to let all this out before it eats you up.”

Tentatively, Brigid nodded, and she wished the prospect of talking to the man who had seen every part of her — the very worst, the very best — didn’t strike her with such numbing dread.

“I will.” Voice crackling from disuse and emotion, it was more to herself than Polly. And then, with another nod and more force, she said, “I will.”

Polly pursed her lips, patting Brigid’s cheek with a gentle hand, and then pulled away. “Good. Now, dry your eyes, and help me bring all of this into the parlor.”

Gulping, Brigid averted her eyes to the table, swiping shaking hands underneath her eyes to clear the tear tracks. The tray rattled in her hands as she returned to Ada, Polly on her heels with a tin of fresh biscuits. Still curled in front of the hearth, a crocheted shawl around her slim shoulders, Ada’s eyes darted to them before returning to the fire.

“Well?” As delicate as she looked, her voice demanded an answer.

Ada wasted no time in snatching the biscuit tin from Polly, and the older woman’s now-empty hand rubbed between Brigid’s shoulders as she leaned down to settle the laden silver tea try atop the covered trunk that served as the Shelbys’ coffee table.

“I have apologized,” Polly said.

Ada crunched a glittery, sugared shortbread in half and dusted the crumbs from her shawl. Lips pursed as she chewed, she watched them with cautious, red-rimmed eyes as Polly perched on the chaise lounge, elbows on her knees; when Brigid settled next to her on the sofa, her hand landed on Brigid’s knee.

“Good,” she said, shoving the last bit of biscuit into her mouth. “Last thing we bloody need is the two of you fighting.”

Despite that tears were still drying on her cheeks, Brigid found herself smiling across the parlor at Polly, a hand settling atop Ada’s. “Who could stay angry at Polly — not when she’s so agreeable?”

“Oh, right joker, you are,” Polly scoffed, but a reserved smirk quirked her lips as Ada giggled and Brigid dug for a biscuit of her own.

In the silence that fell, Brigid’s stomach grumbled. She’d never eaten her supper, still tucked into the depths of her messy bag, which now hung on the coatrack by the door — instead, she reached for another biscuit, nervous belly flipping. Ada mulled over her own buttery shortbread, sighed, looked to the door and back to the fire. Her nerves were palpable, shining on her pale, sickly cheeks. And across from them, Polly’s eyes glinted in the firelight over her folded fingertips, and her gaze raised the fine hairs at the nape of Brigid’s neck.

Running her thumb over Ada’s knuckles, Brigid hoped to impart some semblance of strength, even as she said, “I tried to keep him here. He wouldn’t listen.”

“S’pose I was stupid to think he’d listen to anyone.” Ada lifted a heavy shoulder, sullen. “He never does. Not anymore.”

Inexplicably, irritation flared in Brigid’s chest. Though she knew Ada did not mean it as a jab, the implication — that Tommy was beyond reason, that even _she_ couldn’t make him listen — weighed on her heart.

But Polly, older and wiser, fixed them both with an unflinching stare. “The fault for Tommy’s behavior lies with neither of you.” She leaned forward to slosh a generous helping of the strong tea into a painted teacup. “Who’s more important is _your_ man, Ada. Will he come back?”

“Yes,” Ada said, as uncertain as one could be while giving an affirmative. Hunched forward, feet curled underneath her, she looked like the child Tommy said she was. “He said he would.”

Brigid leaned closer, aware of Polly slurping her tea. “Do you know _where_ he is?”

“Christ, I — ” As if exasperated, Ada leaned forward to fetch the smudged cigarette tin that sat, open and half-empty, next to a full ashtray. “No. He won’t tell me where any of the safe houses are. I don’t…”

Ada cut herself off with the strike of a match, and Brigid met Polly’s dark eyes through the soft curl of smoke — as clearly as if the older woman had said it, Brigid had the thought that Ada was, well and truly, fucked.

She forced it away.

Releasing a frustrated, tobacco-laden sigh, Ada frowned. “I don’t know when he’ll be back. He doesn’t _know_. It’s not like he understands the… the rush.”

“You’re already eight weeks,” Polly stated, her tone that of the long-suffering. How many times had she said as much while Brigid minded the till at Thompson’s? “The longer you wait, the worse it gets.”

Heat rushed to Brigid’s cheeks, and she hissed, “Polly — ”

“Believe me — I know.” Her dark eyes were shining, and not from the flickering fire in the hearth; the flush of anger left Brigid in an instant. “I was sixteen, and I didn’t dare tell anyone.”

A smoldering log fell in the hearth, a _crack_ that echoed through the silence that fell between them. Ada’s knee had begun to shake under Brigid’s hand, and Brigid herself, heart thrumming somewhere in her throat, retracted her cold hand to fold her fingers together.

“What?” Ada’s soft, vulnerable whisper was as chipped as the teacup Polly deposited into its saucer, still rattling. “You never said.”

“In the end, I did it myself. I did it _to_ myself, and I almost died.”

Polly’s long, pearl-drop earrings swayed as she dipped her quivering chin, speaking to her knees. She pressed a trembling hand to her lips, and Brigid’s heart felt hollow and small. “I don’t say it to scare you, Ada love, but you — you need to be prepared if he doesn’t come back.”

“Polly, Freddie _will_ come back — ”

“Why should he?” Polly’s words were as sharp as they could be when her lips were trembling around the memory — the heavy, oppressive, sorely maternal pain that leaked through the deep lines of her face. “You know the words — you’re a _whore_, baby’s a _bastard_, but there’s no word for the man who doesn’t come back.”

Her chest ached, and Brigid rounded her shoulders — _this is God’s punishment for sleeping around like a common whore_.

Polly bit her lips as a tear finally slipped over her dark bottom lashes, blooming on the dark navy of her skirt. The grief rolled off her in waves; Ada’s knee trembled. The moment sunk deep into Brigid’s cracked soul, down to the dark, shadowy part where she’d locked up the memories of the babe she’d carried for only a few weeks longer than Ada, right alongside the platitudes Polly had whispered in her ear as she sobbed in Tommy’s bed.

_I know how you’re feeling_, Polly had said, brushing damp hair from Brigid’s sweaty forehead. Tears collected in the dip of her collarbone, curls clinging to the slope of her neck as if to strangle her — and Polly had wiped them away. _You just have to feel it and feel it true, and someday, you’ll realize that it doesn’t hurt as much. And in the meantime, you can talk to me._

Brigid had thought she was speaking of her two children, the ones she’d lost to the parish before Brigid even knew her, but —

“Polly.” It tumbled out, and Brigid leaned forward to take Ada’s cold hand in her own. “Even if Freddie _doesn’t_ come back, Ada won’t be alone. She — she has _you_, and…” Looking up, Brigid gave Ada a wan smile. “You’ll always have me, love.”

Polly’s mouth flattened, her lips thin; she addressed Ada instead of Brigid. “We can’t save you from being called a whore — going to Cardiff can.”

The memory seized Brigid involuntarily — Polly had said the same to her, years ago, when Brigid had been pale and trembling in this very parlor. She’d curved a hand over the firm, still-flat expanse of her belly, and Polly said, _I know a woman who can… fix this._ She’d rested a hand atop the one Brigid fisted into her soft velvet gown.

“It’s only been a few days.” Brigid returned the squeeze of Ada’s trembling fingers, the other girl’s face pale and shining. “Surely we owe Freddie more _time_.”

“I wrote him a letter, explaining.” Her voice quiet, Ada’s free hand pulled a thin parchment envelope from her dressing gown pocket. “But I don’t — I’m not sure where to post it.”

The letter, creamy and smooth in the dim light, shook in Ada’s hand, and seeing an opportunity, Brigid plucked it from her grip with a certainty that her heart betrayed. “Tommy can figure out where to post it.”

“Excuse me?”

Her gaze snapped to Polly, who was immobile, her face shining and frozen. “Polly, let me talk to him again. I’ll ask Tommy to post the letter — Freddie deserves a chance to marry her.”

Though she hadn’t known it, Brigid had been pregnant when Tommy promised to marry her, when he’d pressed her into the black bricks beside her front door and kissed her until she was giggling and breathless. The new platinum ring on her finger had still been cool from the brisk autumn wind. The memory of it burned in her chest, welling in her lungs, and made it hard to draw breath.

“Freddie will do the right thing.” Tommy had said he would marry her, and Freddie had been one of his best mates. “Let me talk to Tommy.”

Polly, who had leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, now sat up straight once more. Her dark hair frizzed around her temples, and she fixed them with a determined stare as one hand swiped at her tearstained cheeks and the other collected Ada’s smoldering cigarette. Her eyes glinted through the thick cloud of smoke she exhaled.

“If he doesn’t show up by Saturday next, you will get on the train with me, Ada Shelby.” Another heavy sigh forced its way through her lips, and she reached forward to stub out the cigarette. “I’ll not let this ruin your life.”

Brigid nodded in time with Ada, whose eyes had lightened with the semblance of hope, a hand curling over the flat expanse of her belly.

* * *

The Garrison pulsed with warm, lively conversation, and Brigid didn’t draw a full breath until she was finally braced against the bar top. In one of the back booths, a rowdy group of men carried their final tune into a second round — _“She is handsome, she is pretty, she is the Belle of Belfast City!”_ — banging their beer steins on the old wooden tabletop in time with the chorus, not at all deterred by the lack of accompaniment.

Grace, who had resumed work while Brigid tucked away the upright, widened her eyes in judgment and slid a dark pint across to Brigid. “They are certainly sure of themselves.”

“_When we drink, we get drunk…_’” Brigid laughed as she held the stout aloft, tossing back a frothy sip. Licking the foam from her top lip, she winked. “They got there much faster.”

Grace’s giggle was delicate, almost conspiratorial, as the men behind them rose into the second chorus. She glanced down the bar, where Harry served a pair of patrons, and then leaned forward on her elbows,the flush of their performance still high on her cheeks.

“Can you say that in Irish?” She raised her brow in challenge. “You said you knew mostly toasts.”

“And curses.” She considered the question about another sip of her pint. “No, actually, I can’t. How about this? _Fad saol agat, gob fliuch, agus bas in Eirinn_.”

Grace’s other thin brow lifted to join the other, and she repeated the words back with an unpracticed tongue. In stolen moments — Saturdays before they began, various meetings during the day when Brigid would stop by to fetch more ale for the shop — Brigid had passed on the simplest of Irish platitudes and phrases to Grace. The barmaid was an attentive student, rolling the syllables dutifully until Brigid would compliment her pronunciation, even if her accent did half the work.

It was like helping the children with their maths — ignoring their whinging, rewarding them for the slightest victories. “You’ve got it,” Brigid affirmed.

“What’s it mean?” Grace preened under the praise, her voice lilting up with pride.

As if sharing a secret, Brigid leaned closer over the bar top. “‘A long life to you, a wet mouth, and a death in Ireland.’”

Grace’s curls danced as she tossed her head back to laugh, and something warm like flattery twisted in Brigid’s chest. It felt like a crack in the other woman’s careful facade, her delicate words and secretive smiles lost in the shared moment. Brigid hadn’t yet decided if she would like what was on the other side of her porcelain mask. Any number of things could send a pretty girl like her running to Small Heath, after all — an illicit affair, a child out of wedlock, a lover lost to war — but not all of them friendly.

As their laughter died down, Harry passed by with a smile, empty ale cask in hand, and Grace spurred back into action. She swiped down the sticky bar with an old rag as she spoke. “So, who was that handsome man I saw you with yesterday?”

Her gaze fell to Brigid’s left hand, still wrapped around her chilled pint, and the glass scraped against the band of her ring as Brigid lifted it to her lips again.

“Jack — my cousin.” The question wilted the sprig of delight that had sprouted in her chest, and Brigid straightened, glancing at the snug. Down the bar, a roar arose from within, where the Peaky Blinders were making use of the pub’s new set of poker chips. “He offered to walk me to work.”

Grace tossed the rag underneath the bar, nodding to someone over Brigid’s left shoulder — in a mere moment, an empty tumbler was deposited beside her on the bar top, and Grace sloshed out two fingers of gin before a sooty hand retreated with it once more.

Corking the bottle, she asked, “And you work at a dress shop, yes?”

The syllables rolled over Grace’s lips, lilting as if she carefully considered each one, and Brigid chose to believe that Grace didn’t mean it as the start of a jape about her employment. She would be hard-pressed to throw stones when she herself worked in a pub.

“I do,” Brigid tucked a loose, frizzy curl behind her ear. “Are you looking to buy one?”

Grace tilted her head, her smile close-mouthed and secretive. “As a matter of fact, I am.”

Pausing, she pulled a pint for the man who raised a finger to Brigid’s right, exchanging the beer stein for a few glinting coins. As Brigid shuffled out of the man’s path, she said, “I’d be happy to show you around one morning before you’re due at the pub.”

“That would be lovely!” Grace’s eyes glittered. “I _think _I have a date, and I’ve nothing to wear.”

Brigid froze her smile on her face, even as something like embarrassment or curiosity or both wriggled in her chest. She’d no reason to be jealous of Grace, and yet — it had been so long since Brigid had been on a true date. She leaned forward over the bar as if to share a secret, her cheeks hot.

“Though, I should warn you — it’s a secondhand shop.” The intention was harmless, even if Brigid’s stomach roiled, even if the delicate cut and rolled satin hem of Grace’s skirt suggested she was the only one who had ever worn it. “Most of the inventory is cast off from the wealthy ladies in the city center.”

Grace tilted her head in consideration, and Brigid feared her judgment had been made plain through the flush on her cheeks. When the barmaid finally spoke, it was in a soft tone. “Just as well. I haven’t too much to spend.”

Chastened, Brigid thought of her mother — the constant prompts to mind her manners; to be modest; that _envy could rot bones_ — and what she would say if she knew of the jealousy that welled in Brigid’s belly at the thought of Grace and her delicate skirts, her beautiful hair and smooth hands. Why should it matter if she had a date? She had been nothing but lovely to Brigid since her arrival in Small Heath, had welcomed the suggestion that they shop together with — well, grace.

“Well, we have a little bit of everything at every price point.” Brigid’s nervous fingers fluttered for something to do, and she settled for neatening the tuck of her old lace blouse into her skirt’s waistband, eyes cast down. “How does Thursday morning sound?”

Grace’s chin dimpled when she smiled. “Thursday sounds perfect.”

“Great!” An uproar of shouts and groans from the snug saved Brigid from having to elaborate; she hoped her expression didn’t look as pained as it felt as she backed away from the bar. “I’d best make sure they don’t kill one another — blood’s dreadful to get out of this floor.”

Dipping her head, Grace fell into what might have been a half-hearted curtsy. “_Slán_.”

“_Slán leat._”

Short as she was, Brigid ducked under lifted pints and dodged pointy elbows as she crossed to the snug, the remaining half of her stout clutched to her chest. Only once did someone stop her — thin, flushed Colin Sanderson muttered something about how she played _like an angel, yeah_, and Brigid tried to smile through her grimace as she dodged his outstretched hands.

Sighing with relief, she found one of the new runners — Henry something, she thought, but it had been weeks since she was let near the payroll — on the other side of him, guarding the snug’s embossed door.

He couldn’t have been more than sixteen, and yet he squared his shoulders and righted his cap as he looked over her head. “All right, Miss Brigid?”

“Just fine, Henry, thank you.” This time, her smile was true. “Say, is Tommy in there? I saw him pop in while I was at the front.”

He had slipped inside the pub while she plunked out the mournful melody of _Black Velvet Band_ that Grace favored — watched for half a cigarette with quiet eyes and loose shoulders as if he already had his whiskey in him for the evening.

She would need him loose.

“He didn’t stay,” Henry said, tipping his cap. “Left right about the time you started _Belle of Belfast City._”

As he spoke, the younger boy reached behind himself to twist the doorknob of the snug, but Brigid stopped him with a quick hand. “I’ll be off, then. Don’t want to interrupt the fun.”

* * *

The silk lining of his waistcoat shimmered in the wood stove light as Tommy reached for his smudged crystal tumbler. Figure backlit, he crouched forward over the long wooden table — heavy stacks of crumbled banknotes, piles of winking bronze and silver coins, all waiting to be counted. Monaghan Boy had finally lost, after all, and Tommy had always preferred to settle big days himself.

He looked lovely and lonely.

In another lifetime, Brigid would have wheeled out his comfortable desk chair, teasing him for his own standard, straight-backed chair; she would have joined him, passing coins back and forth over a strong pint.

But Brigid’s pocket was heavy — Ada’s letter burned there, a dreadful portent of her business.

“You gonna come over here, or not?”

Startling, Brigid slinked out from behind the doorjamb to enter the bettering shop proper, cheeks hot and bright. The emerald double doors creaked as she shuttered them — the children giggled in the parlor, scattering jacks, listening to Alice’s prim recitation of a pulp she was definitely too young to read — under the pretense of silence.

Approaching, Brigid tucked her nervous hands behind her back. She’d never asked before, but — “Would you like some help?”

Tommy met her gaze, his lips nearly twisting into a frown, before tossing back the last shot of his whiskey. With the empty tumbler, he acknowledged the chair across from him; the single oil lamp at his elbow fractured in its crystal, distorted the shadow of his hand.

Clearing his throat, he said, “You can have the pence.”

The vexed sigh escaped before Brigid could stop it, and he matched her frustration with a wry smile of his own. He knew how much she hated them — so much effort for so little reward — and took her silent judgment as the time to slosh another few fingers of Irish into his tumbler.

“Well?” Tommy lifted a dark brow.

Pulling out the opposite chair, Brigid challenged his raised brow with one of her own. “_You_ can have the pence — I’ll take the pounds, thank you.”

Tommy looked almost impressed as he toasted her, watching with pursed lips as she reached across the dusty table for the pile of mixed, messy banknotes between his braced elbows. With practiced hands, Brigid straightened them into a neat stack, pointedly ignoring Tommy’s eyes until she heard the _clink_ of coins.

She was not wholly successful at holding back her smile; out of the corner of her eye, he wagged a finger. “Pride is a sin.”

“I’ll confess to Father Matthews tomorrow.”

His snort brought out Brigid’s smile for true, and when she glanced across the table, she found him smiling as well. Though she could see the busy day and thoughts of Ada had taken their toll — purple half-moons hung under his eyes — the whiskey had encouraged him to roll his sleeves, run his fingers through his hair. He looked nearly peaceful as his nimble fingers sunk into the pile of pence.

Coins clanked; banknotes rustled. After the tension of their last meeting, Brigid welcomed the quiet. Her mother would have been proud, for there had never been a silence that Brigid, as a girl, hadn’t been eager to break. Instead, she sunk into her chair, stretched out her legs, slipped out of her boots — every muscle protested her day, the double shifts and hours at the piano. Almost sleepy, she counted out the pounds. Her chilled toes met the hard sole of his shoe, and underneath them, his foot nudged her.

“How are you?” His voice was gruff, cracking in time with the low fire behind him. He nudged her again — up, this time — and then, Brigid was lifting her feet into his lap. “How are things at Mrs. Thompson’s?”

Shadows danced in his cheekbones when he averted his eyes down to his lap, and then one hand was massaging the arch of her foot, slow and methodical — another old ritual, another comfort. The other continued to slide pence across the table.

“Good,” Brigid whispered back. She set aside a stack of fifty one-pound notes to fetch a smaller pile of fivers lifted from especially bold (or foolish, as it were) bettors. “Work’s slowing a bit, overall — more people are buying their clothing from those catalogs, you know, pre-sized and all that. It’s getting cheaper, so fewer want secondhand.”

“And what is your opinion on these catalogs?”

“I think your shirt could do with some tailoring around the waist and sleeves.”

Tommy laughed openly, his gaunt cheeks coloring as if he hadn’t expected her to notice that she no longer tailored his clothing. His new shirts, as lovely as they looked starched and pressed from the Chinese washers, weren’t fit to his shoulder-to-waist ratio; his sleeve garters, as well as they accentuated the muscles in his arms, wouldn’t be necessary if she could fix the sleeve lengths.

Now rolling a stack of pence into a thin parchment sleeve, Tommy said, “Just fix me up one I can wear while you do the rest.”

“I can do that.” Brigid’s smile softened, and though he didn’t exactly return it, Tommy’s eyelashes fluttered in the warm light. “I’ll even use my silk thread.”

He folded the parchment roll of pence and stood it on one end beside the rest. “I’m honored.”

Though he had hardly dented the pile of coins in front of him, both of Tommy’s hands fell to the aching muscles of her foot, and Brigid’s eyes slipped closed of their own accord as she sunk deeper into her chair. While he worked the day’s pain from her feet, his fringe slipping down over his forehead, Brigid admired how young he looked when she couldn’t see the ghosts of war in his eyes.

Tommy sucked in a breath as if to speak again but wilted, and Brigid’s fingers stuttered over the banknotes as she took in his averted eyes, his furrowed brow. “What is it, love?”

When he finally looked up, Tommy looked old, worn. The ghosts had returned.

“How is Ada?” Brigid’s brows betrayed her, jumping to her hairline before settling down — as well as she could read him, he could read her, and his shoulders slumped. “She won’t speak to me, won’t even let me talk _at_ her — leaves the room every time I try.”

Chewing on her bottom lip, Brigid focused on tying off the stack of five-pound notes in hand and tallying it, upside down, on the log sheet at his side. “Tommy, she...”

The run of his fingers down her arch caused Brigid to shiver, toes curling. In another lifetime, she might have japed about how he was taking advantage of her, holding her in place so she would do the work for him. He’d certainly been guilty of kissing her into following orders in the past, his lips warm and wet down the line of her throat. But the moment felt too big to belittle.

“Tommy, you scared her at the pictures.”

“I _scared_ her?” He scoffed. “She cursed me out of the theatre.”

“She is quite like her brothers, mind you, in that when she’s scared, she gets angry.” Brigid, prim and pointed, placed her fountain pen parallel to the sums he’d sketched on the crumpled paper.

The turn of his mouth was dismissive, contradicting the unsteady rub of his fingers. “I’m not scared.”

“Oh? What was it you said to Polly?” Brigid fought the urge to twist a loose curl around her finger, the nervous tic that haunted her throughout childhood. “She’ll have no life with a man on the run?”

“She _won’t_.” His sigh was harsh, rushed, and the chair creaked underneath him when he threw his head back. “He’s got no steady job, no real trade. How will they eat when he goes on strike? When he’s run out of the city?”

Resting her chin in her hands, Brigid hoped she didn’t look as despondent as she felt. Nothing he said was incorrect — they _would_ struggle, and they would only struggle more as word of his inclinations spread throughout the industry — and yet…

“Da said the same about you, you know,” Brigid whispered, managing to dodge the crack that threatened to break her voice entirely, “before you proposed.”

“That’s different — ”

“He said you’d never get us out of Small Heath, and I’d be lucky to have a son who could work before you were hanged and left us starving.”

The muscle in his jaw jumped, something dark and dangerous flashing in his eyes. “Bridie, I am working to — ”

“I know, I know — don’t you know what I told him?” Brigid’s lip trembled; underneath her hands, she could feel the flush that rose to her face. “I told him I’d rather starve with you than dine with the King…. and Ada says she feels the same way about Freddie.”

Tommy shook his head, the twist of his lips rueful and grim. “You shouldn’t starve for no one.”

Something like embarrassment stuck in Brigid’s throat — Tommy had endured evenings with no food on the kitchen table and afternoons with an empty lunch pail; he’d survived trench rations and dirty water.

She couldn’t fault him for wanting to protect his sister from that fate, but Brigid sighed, reaching out to fuss with a stray coin. “It’s all right to be scared for her, Tommy, but she’s an adult. She should be allowed to decide for herself.”

Instead of meeting her eyes, Tommy switched his ministrations to her other stockinged foot; the bridge cracked under his careful hands, the tension raising Brigid’s shoulders nearly to her ears. “You work too hard,” he said.

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Brigid, there’s nothing more to discuss.” Frustration leaked into his voice, the tired syllables scraping together. “Everything you’ve said hinges on Freddie coming back — on him marrying her before she starts showing, but he’s _not here_. Does he even know?”

And there it was.

Brigid wished she could reach across the table and take his hand, but the day’s takings — the sums and banknotes and glinting coins — were as wide as Garrison Court between them. Instead, her nervous fingers dug into her woolen skirt pocket for the thin envelope addressed to _Freddie Thorne_, for Ada’s last hope.

Purposefully light, Brigid said, “Ada’s written him a letter.”

His scoff was loud in the otherwise silent room. “And I doubt she knows where to post it.”

“She doesn’t.” The ink shone against the ivory parchment as she slid the letter across the desk to him; the movement finally drew his attention. “We were hoping you could ask around — figure out where he might be hiding.”

“I don’t know any of his contacts — ”

“But you _might_.” Brigid leaned closer, loose, inky curls tumbling over her shoulder. “If you ask around, people will talk — ”

“You want me to rough people up to track down Freddie _fucking_ Thorne?” His eyes were dark, devilish; the lamplight shadows danced in the deep hollows of his cheeks.

He was trying to bait her — into begging, into fighting — and Brigid fought the urge to purse her lips, to let her chin tremble. He already thought Ada a child; Brigid couldn’t fall into the same trap.

“You don’t need to hurt anyone — just _ask_. Dig.” Brigid sucked a bracing breath into her belly, but the sharp press of Tommy’s thumb into the arch of her foot made her wince, as surely as if he were digging right through her facade.

A self-satisfied quirk of his lip ignited a flame of desperation in her chest. Brigid jerked away from him, pinpricks rippling down her loose muscles, stockings now cold where his hands had been. He needed to take this seriously. He needed —

“Tommy, I _know_ you can find him.”

“And why would I?” Voice firm, Tommy reached for his open cigarette tin, his motions as perfunctory as a business deal — he might have been smoothing out a contract or laying out the odds. “If he doesn’t come back, Ada doesn’t have a leg to stand on. There’s no chance of her keeping the baby if she doesn’t have a man to marry.”

“You said you would have married me the first chance you got.” Brigid felt her face crumble, her shoulders wilt. Her voice was small, brittle like broken glass. “Shouldn’t Freddie have the same chance?”

Blinking, sniffing, the room felt too bright — the tears were where she’d gone wrong in his office, when he’d pulled away from her. She couldn’t afford — _Ada_ couldn’t afford — to lose him now.

The strike of his match flashed against his dark eyes, and again, he said, “That’s different.”

“Is it?”

“Brigid — ”

“_Is_ it, Tommy?” Before she could stop herself, Brigid rose to her feet, the floor gritty and rough underneath her stockinged toes. “I didn’t _choose_ to lose our baby, but Ada’s pain would be the same as mine.”

The pins in her chignon continued their slow fall, and newly loose curls fell down her back — it left her feeling raw, exposed, as he stared up at her. Brigid heart crawled up her throat; nausea and grief and desperation churned in her chest, welled up in her lungs until she could hardly breathe. Chin trembling, Brigid pressed her cold fingers to her lips, a shiver wracking up her spine.

_It’ll hurt, yes, but — you’re _already _hurting._

Tommy blinked, swallowed, looked down.

“I don’t think I breathed for weeks.” The words tumbled out like a bloated brook over its bed, uncontrolled and harried. “I didn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t — ”

Brigid’s voice cracked. She wanted to bury her face in her knees like a little girl — it would be easier than looking down at him. “Do you want that for your sister? You want to make her go through that, and to make her _choose_ it?”

“I don’t _want_ to cause her any pain.” He grimaced through the thick smoke of his exhale; his free hand curled into a white-knuckled fist. “But she’ll never have the _chance_ to be happy if she has a child out of wedlock, Brigid. It’ll ruin any opportunity she might have had — ”

“But she’ll have her child! _Their_ child!”

Brigid’s chest throbbed where her heart should have been, the words ripping up any semblance of courtesy she might have had left. She felt black and rueful and vindictive — the image of Tommy dead and pale under tons of French mud was stained behind her eyelids. “You — you might have died before you made it back to me, but… I would have had a _part_ of you, Tommy.”

He’d once told her, tucked close together outside of her mother’s church, that the memory of her was the only thing that got him through the worst of the trenches. Surely he could understand this — surely he would know the desperation that clawed at her throat.

But the silence lay between them like fragments of shattered porcelain — heavy, sharp, unyielding. Brigid had lost her tears, and in their place, she felt unwell. The ghost of their babe and the day she’d lost it had hollowed out her lungs.

“Bridie, come here.” Tommy’s voice was little more than a whisper, like a distant roll of thunder in the night.

Shifting on uneasy feet, Brigid crossed her arms, clutched at her shoulders, and Tommy gave her only a moment before he moved. His chair scraped as he pushed back from the table, the long shadow of his figure stretching across the betting shop’s dusty floor. Brigid couldn’t watch him. She ducked her wobbling chin before he could spot the tears that clung to her eyelashes, fingers digging into the lace of her blouse as his hands came to her shoulders.

He was warm, close — his Adam’s apple bobbed as he considered her. And finally, he spoke. “I wish I had been here. I should have been here.”

“No,” Brigid blurted, shaking her head; the hiss of her gasp was horribly loud. Hot, disloyal tears burned at her eyes. “I’m glad you weren’t. It wasn’t fair for me to… God, how terrible to tell you now — to make you feel a loss you didn’t know.”

Tommy’s callused hands caught on the lace of her blouse as his fingers slid down to encircle her waist, breaking the barrier her arms had built. Hoarse, he said, “I’m glad you told me.”

Brigid felt she might break if she looked at him, that she might fold into two, fall to her knees. Misery twisting at her mouth, she stared at their feet, but her weight sagged, regardless. Tommy caught her.

His hand in her hair, his fingers catching in the snarled curls and misplaced pins, Brigid whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say that.”

“But I am… I could have realized it sooner. I could have written.” Her gasp hurt, hot in her chest and swallowing her case. “I should have stopped working — ”

“You couldn’t have known any sooner than you did.” Tommy forced her to meet his eyes, fingers insistent at her neck, and she found them blazing, shining in the lamplight. “Even if you’d written, I couldn’t have gotten leave to return and marry you. You had to work to _feed_ yourself, Bridie.”

As she fought the sob that ripped from her chest, Brigid’s voice was ragged. “I could have — ”

“Stop, love, stop,” Tommy whispered into her temple, his lips soft, trailing a thumb across the length of her jaw. “You couldn’t have done anything but what you did.”

“Then, _why_?”

The question had haunted her, and now it burst forth with a desperate, mournful rage, the words fighting with one another as they tumbled out.

“Why? Why make me know it? I was a mother, and then, I just — I _wasn’t_.” Her tears, salty, stung where her teeth had broken the skin of her bottom lip; they stained his pressed collar. “What kind of… what kind of god would do that, Tommy? Be so cruel?”

She sounded like a child, begging and pleading, stumbling further into his chest as the emotion numbed her limbs and the tears blurred her vision.

Tommy rocked his head against hers, skin feverish, his own words unsteady. “They told us to pray in the trenches, but I couldn’t figure out what kind of god would let all those men get shot, get blown up, get sick, lose their wits. I — ”

Rueful, he cut himself off with a sound that, from Tommy Shelby, might have counted as a gasp. A shiver wracked Brigid’s shoulders, slinking like tar down her spine, and when she looked up, his eyes were bright with unshed tears.

“I don’t give a fuck about God — he doesn’t give a _fuck_ about us.” Tommy’s thumb traced down her jaw, her damp chin, up over her swollen lip. The reverence in his touch left Brigid feeling fragile, delicate, fractured like porcelain. “In the trenches, I prayed to you. Prayed that I’d get to see in a white dress, put another ring on your finger — that we’d get to make that family we always talked about.”

“I prayed for that, too,” Brigid whispered, the words soft like spring rain. “I still — I think that’s why it hurts so much.”

“Then, we’ll just try again, yeah?” Tommy nuzzled close, his nose ghosting along her cheekbone, lips dangerously close to hers. His brow furrowed, a line deepening between his closed eyes — Brigid wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to never stop. “That’s all this is — trying again.”

It started slow. Tommy’s lips brushed, parted; hot fingers scraped at the lace of her blouse, teasing out a shiver. Brigid’s heartbeat was in her ears, in her thumbs, dueling the pulse in his throat that jumped when she trailed a finger down the long, luscious line of his neck. He stepped closer, or she might have pulled him in, but the hard lip of the shop table dug into her lower back where he crushed her against it. Still in only her stockings, Brigid’s toes curled, tensed — she pressed herself up and into him, a hand twisting into the hair at the nape of his neck.

The cut of his jaw was sharp against her collar as he kissed his way down her neck. “You’re perfect — always have been.” His breath hot, his hands wandering, Tommy’s chest rumbled against hers. “Always will be.”

His teeth found the sensitive skin at the slope of her neck, and Brigid whimpered, the small flame of desire in her belly jumping, pulsing. “Tom — ”

The fire popped, and he kept going, sinful lips dipping below her collar —

Frustrated, almost desperate, Brigid kicked a foot out of her skirt to loop around his calves. He almost tumbled into her — his bad knee, _fuck_ — but then his muscles were shifting, his grip tightening, his breath quickening. The coins rattled and clanked when Tommy heaved her up onto the table.

One arm curled around her back, and she could feel him against every part of her — wool on wool, cotton on lace. “Here?” The other hand spanned the length of her neck, drawing her green gaze up to his blue. “Now, yeah?”

“_Please_.” Her stomach dropped — heat licked up her thighs as she jerked him closer. “Please, Tommy, I want — I want…”

_You, you, always you._

Where her brain and mouth couldn’t, Brigid’s hands spelled out the emotions that swelled in her chest. She dipped through the buttons of his collar, nudged his lips back up to hers, scratched against the silk and wool, and Tommy — he complied.

Complied like she were the priest and he the sinner; like she was the copper and he was the thief — Tommy fumbled with the layers of her skirts, trailing and clenching, decadent and sublime. Brigid gasped, cracking the silence, and Tommy’s breath was heavy, sinking between them like a stone —

“_Aw, bloody hell!_”

Startled, Brigid shivered and tugged away, wracked with the chill that rushed in as they parted. Tommy’s lips were swollen, his cheeks flushed bright with dried tears; she thought he’d never looked more beautiful. Together, they turned, but she curled a hand at the nape of his neck to hold him close.

“There’s kids here, yeah?” Arthur, mustache askew, came stumbling over the threshold from Number Six’s kitchen, already halfway through with unbuttoning his waistcoat.

One emerald door swung into his path — he kicked it back before jumping out of its way, laughing and red-faced. “Keep it in your pants, yeah, Tom?”

Distantly, perhaps in the kitchen, John laughed — unruly, bawdy — as chairs scraped, jacks clinked, shoes scuffed. The children whined the whole way through the front door, and Brigid rested her head on Tommy’s shoulder as her passion slipped away, as Arthur staggered up the stairwell.

How late was it? Exhaustion tugged at her eyes, the lamplight too bright after the dark desire between them.

“I should get home.” The traitorous words were the last she wanted to speak, but without his lips at her throat, the fog of Brigid’s mind had cleared.

Tommy hummed, nosed along her hairline; his grip around her waist had loosened, but the hand he rested on her thigh rubbed slowly, comforting. She felt his voice in his chest when he spoke. “I’ll try to find Freddie.”

“Yeah?” The fragile hope in her voice sprung tears to her eyes again, a heady rush of affection rushing from her ears to the tips of her stockinged toes.

“I don’t — you’re right.” He took her hand in both of his, fingers rough and warm, as familiar as her own. “No one should be forced to go through what you have, and especially not Ada.”

Brigid’s kiss was rushed, unsteady; swollen lips moved together with the care of a first and the fervency of a last. His eyes were soft when she finally broke away. “Thank you, love, _thank you._”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, please let me know what you think! i love comments, i love chatting :)
> 
> [tumblr](https://aryaflint.tumblr.com/)?


	10. x.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoop hello, long time, no posting!
> 
> my work/social life has been busy, politics are A Mess, this chapter was A Hot Mess until two days ago - i hate making y'all wait, but a few of these scenes gave me fits, so i hope you enjoy them now :)

“Alice, love, it being your party doesn’t mean you can scare the others.” Leaned against the doorjamb, Brigid eyed her niece.

Newly eight and wrapped in a gauzy shawl that hung to her ankles, Alice crossed her arms, stomped her foot, and stumbled on the shawl’s glittering tassels. “Auntie Bridie — ”

“Play _nice_.”

She managed to hide her smile until the parlor door shut behind her.

Down the entry hall, gruff chatter echoed from the warmly-lit kitchen. After a hearty supper, her family had gathered around a deck of worn, wrinkled playing cards. She left only briefly to allay Alice’s shrill cry when Little John tugged out a loose thread in her new shawl — porcelain still clinked in the sink basin where Polly waited for her to return. But, as she smoothed her hands over her flour-spotted apron, Brigid paused.

Number Six felt too empty without him now that she’d become accustomed to his footsteps again.

_“Oh, ya goddamn Paddy — ”_ A _smack_ rattled the whiskey glasses atop the kitchen table.

Brigid shook her head and turned to join them; behind her, the door’s latch rattled, caught, clicked. The rush of rain followed, and her heart leaped.

“You’re — ”

“I know.” Tommy heaved a weary sigh. Warm rain dripping from his razored cap, he side-stepped her and stomped his boots. “Got held up.”

Hanging up his coat and cap, he kicked the door shut behind him; the torrential downpour gave way to once more to the giggling children in the parlor, the men grumbling in the kitchen. Even with his shoulders hunched, Tommy filled the skinny entryway.

“We’ve already eaten.” But the tired, lazy look in his eyes swept away the frustration that boiled in Brigid’s belly. Crossed over her chest, her arms prickled with gooseflesh. “I saved you a — ”

Tommy’s lips — flush, tasting of rain — met hers, and Brigid let herself melt. One damp, callused hand cupped her neck, holding her up; the other rubbed along the linen apron tied at her waist, a finger curling underneath. She was hardly one to giggle, but she smiled, humming into his mouth. The memory of the night prior — his mouth at her jaw, neck, shoulder; his slim hips between her thighs; the unwelcome intrusion of his brother — dripped into her belly, dangerous.

She shook her head when she pulled away. “Da’s here.”

_I can’t stay _— the implicit message. His wandering hands wouldn’t convince her otherwise.

And Tommy was hardly one to look put out, but when he brushed back her fringe, he huffed. “Let’s go say hello, then.”

“No.” A warm flush rose to her face with a smile. “You’ve someone to speak with first.”

Tommy looked sorely unimpressed — which was to say, perplexed — as Brigid fumbled with the knob of the parlor door. Poking her head through the gap, Brigid shivered against his hand at her lower back.

“Alice, come here.”

The wild-haired girl stood with her siblings at her feet, staring up in wonder as she flung out her pale hands, mid-curse. And when she pouted, her face was Martha’s. “Auntie Bridie, I am telling a story!”

The other children arose in a chorus to defend their sister; the wooden floor creaked under Tommy as he shifted closer, his breath hot on her neck.

“You have a visitor for your birthday,” Brigid said, voice firm. “It’s not polite to make someone wait when they’ve come to see you.”

When Alice had finally placated her siblings — _an intermission!_ — and skipped over, Brigid cupped the crown of her head, ushering her through to shut the door behind her.

“Uncle Tommy!” Her squeal cut through the entryway, and both adults winced.

As elusive as he was, Tommy had quickly become the favorite uncle. Nevertheless, when the girl launched herself forward to squeeze her skinny arms around his waist, he met Brigid’s eyes with poorly concealed malaise.

Brigid hid her smile behind a hand.

“Happy birthday, Alice.” Frank, gruff — Tommy treated his eldest niece with the gravitas with which she met the world, and her full cheeks rounded as she grinned up at him. “I have a gift for you.”

“What is it, what is it — ”

Tommy shushed, exaggerated, as he crouched to her level, digging into his inner waistcoat pocket. His eyes shone in the dark, bright with what might have been mischief on a younger Tommy — somewhere, deep in Brigid’s chest, sadness ebbed, flowed. He’d always said he wouldn’t make much of a father, but the smirk that quirked on his pale cheeks convinced Brigid otherwise.

A delicate silver chain clinked, taut, and then, a heavy, tapered crystal pendant slipped out of Tommy’s pocket. A clear, faint pink, it glittered under the entryway’s lone oil lamp.

Awestruck, Alice’s big, dark eyes tracked the swinging pendant. “It’s so pretty.”

“Now, this isn’t a trinket or any usual kind of necklace.” With only a few breaths between them, uncle and niece shared a brief understanding that evaded Brigid — not for the first time, she was reminded how closely Alice toed the line between this world and the next. “You ask it any question, hold it up, and it’ll go clockwise for _yes_, and anti-clockwise for _no_.”

“Any question?” Her voice was as hushed as it ever was.

Tommy nodded once. “Yes.”

“Wow.” Alice’s dainty, ink-smudged fingers reached out to take the necklace. “Can I wear it, too?”

Tommy pointed to her with his newly-freed hand, the rosy pendant swinging fat and heavy between them. “_Only_ you should wear it — this isn’t something you share with your sister, or your Aunt Polly, or your friends at school.”

“I don’t like sharing.”

“Alice,” Brigid warned, fighting to keep the smile from her voice, “you know better. Now, thank your Uncle Tommy.”

Instead, Alice flung herself forward again; Tommy’s hand curled into the back of her satin shawl, at ease with this hug where he wasn’t with the first.

Once the girl had skipped past them to rejoin her siblings — a brief flash of parlor light, and then the entryway plunged into lamplight again — Brigid looped her arm through his. His damp suit scratched through the soft cotton of her dress. So close, he smelled earthy like rain, metallic like petrol.

“It’ll match the frock I sewed her,” Brigid pondered as they ambled together down the long hall to the kitchen. “Where’d you find something like that around here?”

The hand that rubbed over hers, rough against the cut of her ring, was still cool. “Had to go to Coventry today — figured I’d bring something special since I’d be late.”

“Coventry?” Brigid’s brows jumped. “Why on Earth?”

He’d taken the car when he slipped out of Number Six that morning; yet, with as busy as he’d been, she hadn’t blinked.

“Business.”

_Business_.

A frustrated sigh scraped at Brigid’s lips, but she rolled them between her teeth, chewing, fighting.

With a single word, it seemed, Tommy had learned to silence her. In the weeks since the Shelbys gathered in the betting shop over a pamphlet from Belfast, he’d let slip both too much and too little. Coppers and guns, factories and horses — all of it _business_, and none of it _her_ business.

Warm light spilled over the threshold from the kitchen, and Brigid faltered. “Tommy — ”

But he didn’t slow, he didn’t let go — and Brigid knew better than to press in front of his brothers.

Around the scrubbed wooden table, the men unwound, ties loosened and sleeves rolled, over a half-empty bottle of Irish that stood sentinel at Arthur’s side. The room was heady; cigar smoke hung over the lamplight in a haze.

“_Fuckin’_ hell,” Arthur grumbled. He scattered his cards on the tabletop, throwing back a shot of whiskey.

Jack, his cheeks flushed, collected the pot of bronze and silver coins with both hands, flashing a grin. “I do hate to do it again, mate.”

It was still strange, even with supper long past, to see Arthur and John — both dark-haired, pale-cheeked — rubbing elbows with her ruddy, red-haired family, as if the two parts of her life were oil and water.

“C’mon, Arthur, I’ve told you.” Voice thick, Brigid blinked against the sight; her hand trailed along Tommy’s forearm as she slipped from his grip. “The more you drink, the worse you play.”

John, eyes twinkling and requisite toothpick perched between his lips, winked as she crossed to the sideboard, where Tommy’s plate of Sunday roast and potatoes sat wrapped in a tea towel. Arthur, in his usual show of poor sportsmanship, pinched at her waist.

“Right joker, you are — ”

Brigid squeaked, dancing out of his path; she nearly collided with her father, who steadied her with his broad, callused hands as he stood. The lamplight accentuated the deep lines of his face, his age. Yet when he shook Tommy’s hand, his grip was firm.

“Been some time, lad,” her father said, cuffing Tommy on the shoulder. “You’re not walking my girl home anymore?”

Tommy dipped his head as if discomfited, a free hand digging into his suit pocket, and Brigid bristled, even if her father’s tone suggested a jape. “I can take care of myself, Da.”

“She can, but you’re right.” Tommy’s silver cigarette tin winked when he flipped it open. “I’ll do it better.”

“I certainly wouldn’t want to cross Brigid in the night.” Jack grinned like a fat cat, his bright eyes darting to Brigid.

“Taught her everything she knows.”

The strike of his match punctuated the jape, and Brigid scowled as heat crept up her cheeks. “Hush — it was Patrick, and you know it.”

Tommy’s lips quirked into a brief smile; her father froze.

As if he sensed the tension in his uncle’s shoulders, Jack stood, positioned himself between them, stretched out a pale, freckled hand to Tommy. “Jack Doyle — pleasure to finally meet you, Thomas.”

“Tommy,” he corrected around the drooping cigarette in his mouth. Their handshake was firm; though his expression was plain, Tommy’s icy eyes dragged down and back up Jack’s slim frame.

Brigid stared for only a moment. The turn of Jack’s nose, the loose confidence in his slim shoulders, the way he stooped and yet still stood tall above the rest in the small kitchen — how strange and rotten to see him with Tommy, like a candle flame distorted through a windowpane, or an old painting stained off-color.

She should have warned him.

Blinking furiously, Brigid focused on unwrapping Tommy’s plate, collecting a set of cutlery from the top drawer, fetching a linen napkin from the cupboard. Blood rushed in her ears; so it was that Polly crept to her elbow without detection. Her hands, still dishwater warm, balanced a stack of clinking porcelain plates.

“Thought he’d never turn up.” Polly kept her voice low, clipped, as the men became acquainted. Behind them, a chair scraped and groaned under Tommy. “Where’s he been?”

“Coventry, of all places.” Brigid peeked over her shoulder — John shoved a tumbler of amber whiskey across the table to his brother, none of them wiser. “Wouldn’t tell me what for. He _knew_ Jack would be here.”

Heaving the plates into the cupboard, Polly jerked her chin in the direction of the table. “He’s charming, you know. James seems happier with him here.”

She spoke the truth. Brigid’s father had smiled more in the past week than he had in months, had laughed more than he had since before the war. They’d passed almost a fortnight of early evenings before the factory bell playing cards over a pot of strong tea — just as they’d done when Patrick was there, flushed and alive.

“It’s nice to have another person in the house,” Brigid said, wishing it didn’t feel like a lie.

She collected Tommy’s laden plate — too full, to be true, given that he never had an appetite — with shaking hands. Polly’s eyes followed her, but Brigid focused on Tommy’s relaxed shoulders, the fingers he curled around the crystal whiskey glass. His other hand encouraged her closer; a hot thumb ran traced the ridge of her spine as she deposited his supper.

Across the table, her father had begun to redistribute the table’s coins, his eyes diverted — for that, Brigid was thankful.

Jack, meanwhile, shuffled the deck with practiced fingers. “Brigid, you should join us.”

Lips pursing around a smile, she ducked her chin —

“No, no, no.” Arthur, red-rimmed eyes squinted in a challenge, shook a finger first at Jack, and then at Brigid herself. “She don’t play cards with us.”

Jack knocked the deck on the oaken table, cut it, shuffled again. The whispering cards sounded like home, like long-nights cross-legged on the parlor floor with Patrick.

His eyes skittered between Brigid and Arthur as if he were tracking a tennis match. “Why not? She’s quite — ”

Mustache bristling, Arthur plucked a fat roasted potato from Tommy’s plate to stuff into his mouth. “She’s a bloody cheat, ’s what she is.”

The corner of Jack’s mouth quirked. Whereas Brigid had learned cards at her Da’s knee and under his careful instruction, Jack spent his childhood losing to Granda Murphy himself. A pub table and a worn set of cards were all their grandfather ever needed — _No matter what, kid, _he’d told her once, a frown deepening the dark lines of his jowls, _you can earn a living at the table if you’re smart._

But the heat that crept up Brigid’s cheeks had nothing to do with Tommy’s hand low on her back.

“I don’t have to cheat to beat you, Arthur.” Her tone might have been harsh, but the men broke into raucous laughter regardless; leaned against the sideboard, even Polly smirked, her dark eyes glittering. “You don’t know how to size your bets, and you gulp every time you have a bad hand.”

He wore his tells like other men wore tailored suits — Granda Murphy would have sent him running, penniless and embarrassed, in minutes.

When her father clapped a hand on Arthur’s slim shoulder, voice genial, Brigid once again marveled at his disposition. Like he was sharing a secret, he said, “She’s right, you know.”

Arthur’s face shone red from the liquor, but underneath his heavy mustache, he might have smiled.

“Sit down.” John snapped his fingers at Brigid, pointed at the chair next to Tommy; the motion was irreverent as the lean of his chair. “Don’t mind losing to you as long as you get him, too.”

Ever charismatic, Jack winked from across the table before catching Polly’s eye. “Care to join, Mrs. Gray?”

Tommy’s hand slid up Brigid’s back as she dropped down next to him. When he reached the dark knot of curls at the nape of her neck, he settled his arm along the top rail of her straight-backed kitchen chair.

“Call me that again, and I’ll cut you.” Polly twisted her dark, disheveled hair atop the crown of her head as she joined them.

Underneath the table, Brigid looped her ankle over Tommy’s, but her eyes remained on Jack, his lithe fingers and scarred knuckles. “You’d better not stack that deck, Jack Doyle.”

“Brag.” Instead of defending himself, Jack flicked the first card her father — he commanded the table with the same nerve with which Patrick had once commanded the Garrison on Saturday evenings. “Three-card.”

Tommy’s damp suit cuff scratched at the back of her neck, raising the hairs along her arms. The heady smoke of his cigarette sunk deep into Brigid’s lungs, the heat of the kitchen into her bones. Unprompted, she sipped from his amber whiskey, and the red lipstick she saved for special occasions left a ring along the rim.

“Tell me about yourself, then, Tommy.” The deal done, everyone shuffled through their cards, but Jack merely flicked a glance at his own before meeting Tommy’s cool blue eyes with his own. “Brigid hasn’t said much.”

Tommy’s thumb stalled along the slope of her shoulder. “Never known her to have nothing to say.”

She sensed he was japing, but Brigid, cheeks hot, nudged his foot underneath the table regardless. The _thud_ accompanied her father, left of Jack, tossing twopence into the pot.

“I hear you’re a bookmaker?”

“Yes.” He held his cards aloft in one hand, tapped his cigarette into the ashtray with the other. “Family enterprise, you could say.”

Polly’s dark eyes flashed across the table to Tommy, her thin lips pursed, as she raised the bet by a single penny.

“Which tracks do you work?”

To his credit, Jack sounded truly curious. Gambling had never been out of the Murphy family’s realm of ethics, regardless of what they were taught in Mass or confessed to their priests.

But Arthur coughed into his elbow and tossed his cards face-down onto the sticky tabletop; had the pointed question not drawn Brigid’s full attention, she would have mourned the loss of such a poor player so early in the round.

“We don’t — ” Arthur hissed through a deep swig of whiskey. “We’re not currently working the tracks.”

Jack’s brows, thin and arched like her brother’s, jumped to his hairline. “So, you all are illegal bookmakers, then.”

Something thick like embarrassment crawled up Brigid’s throat; she ducked her eyes to her cards to avoid Jack’s look. She had only a pair — nines — and had failed to track her family’s plethora of tells — John’s poor posture, her father’s jittery fingers, or Polly’s pursed lips. She called Polly’s bet with three pence of her own.

“People will always find a way to make a bet.” Tommy shrugged, his thumb dipping up and down the cotton sleeve of her dress. He called, too. “We make that happen.”

People in Small Heath knew of the robberies and beatings, the illegal betting shop that stretched across the ground floors of Numbers Four and Five Watery Lane, the danger of a peaked black cap. They admired the Shelbys for their ambitions and means; they resented them for the long shadows that followed.

Small Heath knew of the Peaky Blinders, but Jack didn’t.

When John finally added four pence to the pot, Jack’s sharp blue eyes barely considered his own cards before raising it to six — they scraped over the table as he spoke. “I hear you all have inherited a copper of ours.”

Brigid’s father folded.

“We’ve inherited quite a few.” Polly matched Jack’s raised bet, her dark, curious gaze trained on Brigid’s cousin. “Not all as cordial as you.”

The _clink_ of her pence in the pot broke through the tension and cigarette smoke. Brigid swallowed the lump in her throat, washing it down with a burning sip of Tommy’s whiskey. The thought, once again, nagged —

Jack Doyle wasn’t a fool, but he _was_ a hard worker. His reported poor luck in the Belfast job market still seemed a hollow pretext to arrive in Birmingham within a fortnight of Inspector Campbell.

“Are they giving your business trouble, yet?” Jack’s crystal tumbler clipped on the table, the whiskey sloshing to-and-fro; his Patrick-wide eyes had narrowed as if sharing a secret. “Doesn’t like corruption, that Inspector.”

“Not yet.” Gruff, it wasn’t wholly true — a runner had been lifted and his pockets cleared just yesterday —but Tommy’s eyes were steady when he raised the bet to eight. “Coppers like a wager, too.”

The game quickened — John peeked at his cards, slumped his shoulders, called. Jack leaned back in his chair, raised the bet to nine with a single bronze pence that winked when he flicked it in. Arthur groused, leaned over Polly’s shoulder to peek at her cards, anxious for the round to end.

“Do you have a plan for growth, then? Can’t make a living off war pensions forever.”

“You’re clever,” Polly said as she folded and tossed her cards flat onto the table next to Brigid’s father’s elbow, “but this is hardly a conversation for a game of cards.”

Their grandfather had always jawed his way through a game of cards with the enthusiasm of a bored housewife — until he’d swindled the others into raising their bets round after round. Jack had learned from James Murphy Senior and his driving bets, his certainty.

Chewing her lip, Brigid tossed a silver shilling into the pot.

“Just looking out for my cousin, is all.” Jack winked across the table.

Tommy cleared his throat, the muscle in his jaw jumping; without thinking, Brigid reached up to thread her fingers through his, their twined hands resting against her lace collar. Her heart leaped in her throat, the heat of the room and Tommy’s arm washing down her neck.

He tossed a shilling of his own into the pot. “We’re looking to expand onto the tracks.”

“We _are_?”

John’s front chair legs slammed to the floor, as sudden as his grumble. Troubled eyes flicked from Tommy to his cards to the pot — he slumped his shoulders, as he was wont to do, and folded. “Since when?”

“Cheltenham’s in a month.”

The statement grated like ice against a whiskey glass, and surprise parted Brigid’s lips. Of, course, she knew Cheltenham was on the way — she’d watched with narrowed eyes as John leveled the odds, judgmental but chastened — but they’d never spoken of attending. Of _working_ it.

The Peaky Blinders had no legal license, as the lack of a wedding band on her left hand so consistently reminded her.

Jack flipped two shillings into the pot.

“Billy Kimber runs Cheltenham, Tom,” Brigid muttered, pushing another two shillings to the center of the table. The game was like a familiar friend, something to focus on other than the sudden, ice-cold wash of worry down her spine.

“I’m aware.”

Curt, Tommy’s voice brooked no argument. Instead, he plucked up the side of his top card as if to consider it before pushing them, face-down, forward across the table. “What about you, Jack Doyle? What brings you to Birmingham?”

Like that, the game was down to two; the tension slipped out of the room like a whispered sigh.

“I’d say three threes brought me to Birmingham,” Jack said; he revealed his hand with a quirk of his lips.

Cursing, Brigid flipped over her pair before knocking the cards even against the table. “I told you not to stack that damn deck.”

Tommy’s Adam’s apple bobbed, his narrowed eyes tracking the smug lines of Jack’s face. Did they remind him of the best mate he’d buried in France? Patrick had once looked at them the same way, that warm evening he’d caught them snogging in the back garden and claimed he’d known of their trysts for weeks.

“Fucking cardsharps, the lot of you!” Arthur’s hand smacked the tabletop, rattling whiskey glasses and the porcelain plate that held the remains of Tommy’s supper.

Brigid’s father released a heavy, relieved sigh as he collected the scattered cards; he shuffled with the same practiced hands, the easy overhand method he’d taught her long before her mother had trained her fingers to thread a needle. “I’d have thought bookmakers would be better at speculation.”

And James Murphy had never been known for his humor, but the table dissolved into warm, lovely laughter. As Jack collected his winnings, Brigid tossed back the last of Tommy’s whiskey, turning to nose along the line of his neck under the guise of whispering in his ear as it burned in her belly.

Not thinking of Tommy’s _business_ — the coppers and their missing guns, the shop and the tracks — was easy. As Polly had said, it wasn’t a proper conversation for a game of cards.

* * *

March crept up quickly, quietly, and Brigid learned the hard way. She could no longer retire for the evening with her bedroom curtains thrown wide to track the fat, misty moon across the sky until she fell asleep — that morning, the sun painted her bedroom a hot, over-bright orange, and sweat dripped down the dip of her collarbone.

Despite the sun’s path high above Small Heath’s smoky skyline, Number Six still slept — curtains drawn, lamps dark, Arthur’s thunderous snoring shaking the foundation. Brigid draped her soft knitted cardigan over the coatrack, nudged a pair of muddy brown boots out of the doorway, collected an abandoned, stained suit jacket from the floor.

Ada’s ermine-lined spring shawl hung delicately over the coatrack’s last hook; Brigid thanked God the girl hadn’t run off before Tommy could deliver on his promise.

The grandfather clock tolled the hour, and the hob rattled as she settled the full kettle on the back burner. Yet, Brigid tiptoed. She hoped to savor her tea over the morning paper — weeks had passed since her last morning without delighted interruptions from the children or Arthur’s hungover grumbling.

_Clink_.

Startling, Brigid froze along the well-worn path from the hob to the sideboard, squinting at her feet. Scattered jacks glinted across the walkway, glittering and kicked aside, and hot irritation flared in Brigid’s chest.

She said a quick farewell to her hope for a quiet morning, and then, she let the betting shop’s doors _crack _against the chipped plaster as she strode through them.

“Wake up, John.”

Suit rumpled, snoring, he was slumped forward over a collection desk, the oil lamp long burned out. The crisp ledger pages below his folded arms creased when he shifted, but he didn’t lift his head.

Her heels clicked, sure and steady, as she crossed to him. “Wake up, John,” she tried again, absentminded hands collecting a pair of sticky pewter beer steins from an adjoining desk. “It’s morning.”

This time, he didn’t sir. Now, staring down at him, Brigid dropped the steins to the desk with a _thunk_ — and, well, she didn’t intentionally slam them, but when he startled upright with a swear, Brigid fought the vindictive smirk that threatened to curl her lips.

“_Fuck_.” Clumsy hands scrubbed at his drooping eyes. “Time’s it?”

“Half seven.” She slid his whiskey glass to join her collection of drinkware at the head of the desk and clarified, prim, “in the morning.”

He paid no mind to the crumpled ledger below him when he collapsed onto his elbows, hiding his red-rimmed eyes from the bright light that shone through the shop’s east-facing windows. John rolled his shoulders, cracked his neck, moaned low in his throat.

Brigid wanted to feel sorry for him, given her wartime tendency to fall asleep in much the same way. She _might_ have, had it been the first, second, or even fifth time she found him in such a position since he returned from France.

But instead, Brigid pursed her lips and hoped, for his sake, he had an excuse that amounted to more than drunkenness. “John — ”

“Don’t fuckin’ start — ” A yawn cut off his complaint, a clumsy hand ruffled his hair, and Brigid raised a single, delicate brow. He had the decency to stare at his boots.“Sorry — I’m sorry. I know.”

“We’ve talked about this.”

They had the _very_ first time she found the children tucked, two to a bed, in Polly’s spare rooms, still in their dusty day clothes — that was what frustrated her the most.

“You need to take them home every night.” Forceful like a factory clang, the words tasted sour. “You need to be there with them — make them feel safe there. They need to know they have a home with you, John.”

John planted his elbows on the desk once more, rattling the steins and whiskey tumbler on the uneven top. “I know.”

“Is that all?” Brigid itched to collect the smudged glasses, to stalk back to the kitchen and lose her black thoughts underneath a layer of soapy sink water. “_Knowing_ and _doing_ are two different things.”

Brigid chewed her tongue, stuck somewhere between indignation and pity as he heaved another deep breath and stared at the accounts. They were unfinished, marred with smudged ink and abandoned sums; as if he realized this at the same time she did, John groaned again.

“Spent all night trying to get this to add up.” He gestured to the ledger with a pale, sleep-creased hand, scornful. “Something isn’t making sense.”

Curiosity slinked up, subtle as a tomcat; Brigid braced her hands on the top rail of his chair, peering over his shoulder. From above, his statement was evident. A few pounds had been lost between the budgeted and actuals for yesterday’s payout, the kind of discrepancy that would have left her pulling out her hair — had she been allowed to care, that was.

Since Tommy’s admonition, that dark evening in his office with Danny Whizz-Bang’s blood on his collar and whiskey burning her lips, Brigid had done little but count pence and keep her head down.

“Didn’t Lovelock work the desk yesterday?” Scudboat had been laid out with a fever, and Brigid recalled muscled Lovelock on the wrong side of the front desk. “Y’know he gets his numbers all switched around.”

John scoffed, scratching at his mussed hair, and found the fountain pen his sleepy fingers had abandoned. “Fuck.”

Encouraged, in her element, Brigid leaned closer over his shoulder. The thin cotton of her blouse scratched at his rumpled woolen suit as she ran a single finger down the columns; John, still warm from sleep, froze with his dry pen perched over the ledger.

After a long moment, she tapped the page in victory. “There — no one could have gotten twenty-one shillings off that bet. Try it with twelve.”

John’s cheek curved with a wry smile, and he suddenly seemed much closer. Brigid backed away, balanced one hip against the rough desk as he reworked his sums, yawning into his opposite fist.

“That won’t solve all of it,” she instructed, circling a finger over the lip of his whiskey tumbler, “but check his payouts, rebalance the safe. He’s not one to lift money, so it should all add up once you find his mistakes.”

“You’re right.”

His pen scratched in the silence between them; after a long moment, John finally tossed it down with a swear. A triumphant flush crept up her cheeks, and Brigid felt exposed as he leaned back in his chair, perching his boots atop the desk.

His tired eyes were trained on her, almost admiring. “You’re better at this than me, you know.”

“Hardly,” Brigid scoffed; the praise sunk into her chest anyway. “I just pay better attention.”

She was being kind, and they both knew it. Brigid placed out of her maths class within a fortnight of starting school, and though John was a year above her, she spent the next six or so years besting him at every turn until he finally left school for good. It had been the only class she ever took without bumping elbows with Martha.

But the admission burned somewhere deep in her stomach — admitting it would make it real, but it didn’t matter. She had her orders.

“Why’d Tom tell you to stay out of it?” John’s voice, soft, pulled her back to the present.

Shifting her weight, Brigid crossed her arms. “He didn’t explain — just said the books were yours, now.”

“He acts like we can all read his fucking mind.” His chair creaked underneath him, ominous, jolting Brigid’s heart into her chest. She felt watched, but a glance over her shoulder confirmed that they were alone. “Where’s he get off changing everything when it’s been working?”

“Well, I can’t read his mind,” Brigid parroted, shoulders slumping.

She didn’t want to look at the book because his poor penmanship would inevitably make her anxious. She didn’t want to look at him because his eyes were a little too accusatory, and Brigid didn’t like to feel as if she and Tommy were on different sides.

Instead, Brigid crossed to the messy desk behind him — crumpled racing papers, a full ashtray, a sticky whiskey bottle perched on the edge. Her nervous fingers swept crumbs onto the dusty floor, and Brigid made a mental note to sweep before they opened for the day.

“He should treat you better than that.”

The hairs on the back of her neck rose — John still watched her, and with his arms crossed, she reflected that he did a remarkable job of imitating his imperious, much-younger sons.

“It’s not fair to you,” he continued, firm. “It’s not fair to the shop.”

“I’m sure he has his reasons. It’s fine, John.”

It wasn’t fine. Even now, weeks later, the sight of John strolling about with the ledgers in his arms while she pushed pennies like a common bookie could sour her day. She hated it, and she hated herself for feeling it.

Brigid’s chest felt tight, uneasy, John’s irritation palpable.

His front chair legs slammed to the old, scuffed floor as if he’d been struck by lightning or a particularly brilliant idea. “You should help me.” Mischief shone in his eyes. “Fuck Tommy — he doesn’t have to know.”

Brigid quirked a brow. “He’ll know.”

Tommy always did.

John’s hand swiped away her words, as sure as her response was flimsy. “Nah — he’s never fucking around anymore, anyway. Just check up behind me and all, and he’ll never know.”

“John — ” The eagerness in his bright, Shelby blue eyes wormed its way around the walls of her heart; without realizing it, she’d leaned forward. “I don’t know…”

“C’mon, Bridie,” he implored, patting the side of her knee — as far as he could reach with her braced against the opposite desk. The intention, if not the force, was the same with which he’d cuff a hand over a runner’s shoulder.

But his fingers on the tender skin on the back of her knee, even through her heavy skirt and slip, sent a chill down her spine.

Brigid paced away on uncertain feet. “And if we get caught?”

“Just keep showing you’re the best at it.” John’s heavy boots echoed throughout the otherwise empty shop as he followed her, and then he was curling large hands around her shoulders. “He’ll come around.”

When she met his eyes again, Brigid knew he meant his statement in earnest — for all his bombast, John was a terrible liar. But Tommy had told her to stay out of it, and he’d meant it. She’d promised him, surrounded by the shattered pieces of her mother’s porcelain, that she would listen.

John barely gave her a moment to heave a sigh before he wrapped her into a hug. “Now, when has Brigid Murphy ever let anyone tell her what to do?”

_I want John on top of the books, not you._ Brigid had learned to be happy playing second fiddle, following orders — losing a mother young could force a girl to shoulder too much responsibility.

But John squeezed, lifting her off her feet, and Brigid squealed at the sudden, weightless swoop in her stomach.

“All right,” she whined, rueing the almost-girlish laughter that bubbled on her lips, “all right, then. But — ”

John’s eyes shown, conspiratorial, already drunk with victory; Brigid poked him in his loose necktie. “But you’re still going to pull your weight, John Shelby — no slacking off just because you know I’ll be checking up after you.”

“Oh, don’t you worry, Miss Murphy.”

“Don’t be a wanker.” Brigid scoffed, wriggling out of his grip. Her anxious hands collected the forgotten beer steins and whiskey tumblers. “You haven’t convinced me of anything I wasn’t already thinking.”

There was only so much burning envy she could swallow without blackening inside.

John winked. “Knew you must’ve been planning something.”

And then he slammed the ledger closed — Brigid spared only a wince for the damp ink — and pressed a kiss to her forehead. The utter ease with which he showed affection reminded her of Tommy before the war; it nearly turned her sad.

“I’ll get the kids home and fry something up — don’t worry about it.” John’s footsteps echoed behind him as he strode to the double doors that led to Number Six’s kitchen. On the other side of them, he added, “Think you forgot to start the kettle, love.”

She didn’t respond, for he was already climbing up to the first level to rouse his children; instead, uncertainty churned in her chest. There’d been a time in her life when Brigid peddled in brash decisions — she’d thought she was past it.

Had she made a mistake, agreeing to help him? Losing Tommy wouldn’t be worth it.

“Damn.”

Warmth lingered on her temple from his kiss; Brigid shook her head. The morning dust of the shop was getting to her, and she vowed to give everything a good dusting before they opened for the day.

* * *

The midday sun hung fat and heavy above Small Heath; in contrast, Mrs. Thompson’s Tailoring and Haberdashery had fallen into shadows. Sat on a rickety stool, Brigid hissed, jerking back her finger from underneath the embroidery hoop with a curse.

_“Are you all right?”_ Grace’s called from beyond the heavy velvet curtain that separated the changing nook from the shop proper.

Brigid knew better than to embroider heavy wool with a dull needle, and the frustration bit with its same force. “I’m fine,” she grumbled.

Grace’s stockinged feet were just visible underneath the curtain’s fringed border as she stepped into her next dress.

The barmaid, Brigid had learned, was a particular shopper. She grazed over the fabrics with a delicate hand; she picked at skirt seams with practiced fingers, appraised cuts and fits with a keen eye. Perhaps _too_ keen — their early gambol through the dress shop had carried through the noon opening and six discarded gowns of varying silks and satins. The peach had been too frumpy, the mint too tight. Grace had neither shoes to match the lavender, nor a hat to match the duck-egg. They had both agreed the marigold didn’t flatter her golden curls.

Sucking on her pricked finger, Brigid’s eyes traced the curtain’s fringe with flagging interest. “Do you need help?”

The damask caftan with which she’d retreated was too large for her slim waist, intended to tie at the natural waist with a slinky, nearly invisible ribbon. Her boldest choice, Grace had wavered over it for ten minutes before Brigid convinced her to give it a go — _It’s too big, yeah, but that’s the style. Easy enough to take in if you’d prefer._

_“I’m done.”_

She swept the curtain back with little fanfare — and the scarlet gown might have been too large, but if anything, the draped satin accentuated her tiny figure, sloping off her shoulders and swishing about her knees. Inadequacy prickled on Brigid’s skin, and she approached the barmaid from behind as she considered herself in the tall, gilded mirror.

“Goodness, it’s lovely,” Grace murmured, smoothing a hand down the loose bodice.

“You wear it well.” The ribbon, tied with unpracticed fingers, had already begun to fall out. Brigid picked at the knot with pursed lips. “I don’t think I’d even need to take it in, really.”

Grace Burgess wore satin damask as if she’d been born in it — for all Brigid knew, she had been.

In the mirror, her lips quirked into a one-sided smirk. “What do you think — too much?”

“You’ll stand out no matter where you go.” Tucking the ribbon neatly underneath the loose fold of the bodice, Brigid peered over Grace’s shoulder to assess the fit. “Which is where, by the way?”

“The Cheltenham races, actually.”

Brigid’s brows jumped — few men in Small Heath could afford a trip to the Cheltenham Festival, let alone pay their way into the owners’ tents that would warrant a dress of silk or satin. Who’s eye had Grace caught from atop her barstool?

Grace spun once in the mirror, and the satin swirled about her knees like a magician’s flourish. “Have you ever been?”

“No, I haven’t.”

Tommy had always loved horses, but even so, they’d never been to the racecourses. Before the war, before he’d lost his good humor in the French mud, the thought of the legal bookies hobnobbing about the drink tent and collecting bets as easy as tithes had gritted his teeth, tightened his fists. Thomas Shelby had never been one to appreciate the reminder of what he didn’t have.

Brigid’s pricked finger throbbed; she squeezed it in her fist. “This time of year, you’ll see lots of neutrals there — cream, ivory, blush. This _would_ be bold.”

“It’s too much, then?”

“Not necessarily,” Brigid muttered, fidgeting with the drape along her shoulder, the satin as smooth as butter. “You’ll just have to wear it like you mean it.”

To her credit, Grace laughed; eyes bright, a humbled grin stretched across her face. But something dark, tar-like, gnawed in Brigid’s belly. She drew her bottom lip between her teeth, quashing a sneering reminder that Grace was quite practiced at being the center of attention.

In the shop, the barmaid was, first and foremost, a customer.

Grace spun in the mirror again, her question carrying like an afterthought. “How much is it?”

The satin damask was one of their finer fabrics — even without tailoring, Brigid sensed it might be out of the other woman’s price range. “It’s five pounds off the rack. Another eight shillings, probably, if we take in the waistline.”

“Oh.”

Grace’s flushed face fell, her smile slipping away like Small Heath’s soot in the rain. And when her blue eyes met Brigid’s green in the mirror, Brigid felt distinctly unkempt. She’d been careful to twist her curls into a neat knot, prepared for a morning of tracking Birmingham’s finer streets with the pretty barmaid, but her hair always gave way to its own whims in the afternoon.

Heat crept up Brigid’s neck.

Grace finally spoke. “I was hoping it’d be closer to three.”

“Not for jacquard fabric.” Brigid twisted her ring around and around; the small diamond stung her pricked finger. “The peach satin would be about two, and I could keep it under three even if I take in the bust and bodice. The lavender would be two pounds, twelve shillings.”

Sighing, the barmaid turned back to the mirror, her eyes trained on the shimmery damask. “I’ll need to think about it,” she said around a frown. “Could I come back next week?”

“Of course.”

Her mother’s admonishing voice niggled at the back of her mind, telling Brigid to _be polite_ — she smiled over Grace’s shoulder and forced herself not to think of the three hours as wasted.

The grandfather clock at the front of the shop tolled the half-hour; Grace startled into action again, a soft gasp at the time on her lips. After she’d swept behind the heavy velvet curtain, Brigid stared at herself — unruly hair, simple skirt, tired eyes — before returning to her stitching. The loose threads had become tangled; gently, Brigid focused on plucking them apart.

_“Your cousin — my countryman.”_ Grace hopped from foot-to-foot underneath the curtain. Satin swished; buttons clinked. _“What’s brought him to Birmingham?”_

Smoothing down her satin stitch with her little finger, Brigid considered the design, the balance of the colors. “Looking for employment,” she said, absentminded. “The Black Swan Inn’s just brought him on behind the bar.”

_“The Black Swan?”_ Grace’s stockinged foot stepped into her small T-strap heel, and not for the first time, Brigid remarked that they couldn’t be comfortable shoes to wear while working in a pub. _“That’s quite far from Small Heath, isn’t it?”_

“Not so far — my Da drinks there.” Brigid collected the woolen gown and its newly untangled threads to return to the till. “Jack said he spent several years working in pubs back in Belfast.”

She squinted against the bright light as she approached the shopfront, and Grace’s voice grew faint. _“Is that where your family’s from, then?”_

“Most of them.”

Within moments, Grace emerged from the changing nook with her hat pinned neatly atop her curls, dressed in a simple lace blouse and a burgundy skirt hemmed to her knees. In her hands, the six discarded dresses were folded, the scarlet damask on top.

“I’ll take those.” Brigid stretched forward to collect the stack of satin and silk. “And I’ll see you on Saturday.”

Smiling, tipping her hat, Grace said, “_Slán leat_, Brigid. Thank you for your help.”

A warm breeze snuck in behind the barmaid as she slipped out, rustling the dresses on the front rack.

Beyond the shop’s windows, mothers in spring hats led their youngest children by the hand, and businessmen in smart suits dashed back to their offices as the midday breaks came to a close. Brigid watched them as she returned the dresses to their racks — the peach, mint, and marigold to the long rack of spring satins; the lavender and duck-egg to the year-round rack of formalwear. Last was the damask caftan; as a favor to Grace, she hid it between two heavy linen frocks.

Any of the dresses would have been perfect for Cheltenham, Brigid reflected, even if Grace the Barmaid wasn’t so easily pleased. Mrs. Thompson had even collected the lavender and peach dresses within a week of last year’s festival, almost certainly cast off by the daughters of wealthy horse owners. But wherever Grace was from, she’d learned to have higher standards —

Brigid’s fingers froze over the wooden clothing hangers; a hot wave of mortification slinked down her neck and into her chest like tar.

_Cheltenham._

Swallowing a hard lump in her throat, Brigid stared out the shop’s front window; her vision blurred from the bright light, the glinting shop letters, the burning on her face. It was the second time within a week someone had mentioned they’d be attending the Cheltenham Festival, and the thought of the two of them mingling turned her lightheaded.

Brigid heaved a sigh, suddenly uncomfortable in the heat, in her bespoke waistline. The heavy knot of hair at the back of her neck scratched and prickled.

Grace had a date, and Tommy had business. Surely, the two wouldn’t mix.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, please let me know what you think! i love comments and chatting :)
> 
> [tumblr](https://aryaflint.tumblr.com/)?


	11. xi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello hello! this chapter is brought to you by nanowrimo ramblings and desperate february revisions :)

When the old grandfather clock in the parlor below tolled half-eleven, Brigid released a ragged sigh — _finally._

She slid out from underneath her half-finished patchwork quilt, careful to tuck away the four threaded needles, and winced as the old iron bed frame creaked. Her bedroom was warm, almost balmy, the air metallic with the lurking storm. Yet, underneath her spring day dress, gooseflesh prickled on her clammy skin; stockinged toes curled against the dusty floorboards.

Sleep had evaded her that evening. She felt like a live wire; like a grenade with its pin pulled, ready to blow with worry.

Tommy would attend Cheltenham in less than a fortnight, and Brigid hadn’t the faintest clue of his strategy. Even if her skin hadn’t been too hot underneath the thin cotton, she would have found it difficult to sleep.

Difficult not to worry.

Difficult not to imagine him in an owner’s tent, arm-in-arm with a slim barmaid in scarlet damask.

The dreaded floorboards cared little for her silent mission. Brigid balanced her weight with a slow sigh as they groaned, the weight of it creeping up her neck. Stealing across her bedroom, donning her old, threadbare coat — it felt like an odd sort of déjà vu. After all, it wasn’t the first, tenth, or fiftieth time Brigid had snuck out to meet Tommy Shelby in the warm fold of his bed. The long stretch of Small Heath’s shadows was as familiar as her reflection.

Though Jack, asleep across the hall, was a new, unknowable variable.

Patrick had never cared. Half the time, he would tiptoe down the stairwell only minutes before she stole from her own bedroom; the other half, they would collide headlong on the landing. His grin had always been bright, even in the pitch-dark night.

_I don’t care if you sneak around_, he’d whispered the first time, shadowing her down the stairs as she burned up to her ears with embarrassment, _so long as it’s only Tom._

She’d hissed like a teakettle ready to boil, warning him that he could never, under any circumstances, tell their father. Patrick had winked. _Your lack of virtue is safe with me, Sis._

Only the fear of waking their father saved him from her flat-palmed strike. It had been six years prior, but Brigid smiled at the memory, tucking a loose, tangled curl behind her ear.

The cold knob bit at her fingers, and the newly-oiled bedroom door swept open with only a silent whisper.

Across the landing, Patrick’s bedroom door was latched, as it had been when she arrived home. The sickness that had taken root in the lungs of all four children kept her at Number Three long after nightfall — so it was that Brigid hadn’t seen Jack before he retired for the evening. She’d waited until the depth of night anyway, to be certain he wouldn’t wake and catch her.

Shuffling over the creaky threshold, breath caught in her lungs — the landing groaned — Brigid kept the doorknob twisted open until the latch was firmly in place. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears; the heat of it twisted in her belly —

“Oh — ”

_Fuck._

Jack, hair tousled, still in his rumpled day clothes, crested the top step. “Brigid?”

Embarrassment flooded her cheeks and ears, and Brigid gaped, feeling as if her chest might cave in. This was so, _so_ much worse than Patrick. With a glass of water in hand, the top few buttons of his shirt already undone, Jack was decidedly _not_ sneaking out of their home like a wanton lover.

“Hello,” she whispered, syllables tripping. The mortification gripped its tight fist around her throat, jerking the breath from her lungs.

“Are you going somewhere?”

Dim moonlight filtered through the landing’s foggy window, reflected in his pale eyes as he took her in — her stockinged feet, the cotton dress that peaked out from underneath her unbuttoned coat, the boots in hand. She gaped, grasping for an explanation, for an excuse that would save her from —

“Off for a midnight rendezvous?”

And if Jack had once looked confused, his brow smoothed; amusement colored his words. In the dark, his white teeth bared in an inexplicable smirk.

What could she say to him? This was _Jack_, who had known her when she was nothing more than a loud-mouthed girl with twin plaits down her back and scabs on her knees. He’d taken the fall when the pot of ice water they rigged above the kitchen door to drench Patrick had fallen on grumpy Granda Murphy instead. He’d snuck a slice of treacle tart into the spare bedroom at Auntie Ellen’s for her to enjoy when she’d been sent to bed without supper anyway.

How could she now admit to him that she was off to beg her way into her fiancé’s bed? And what would stop him from telling her _father_?

“Oh my God.” Brigid dragged her free hand — the one not clenched, white-knuckled, around her boots — down over her face, unable to look at him.

But Jack laughed, loud, open, the traitorous floorboards creaking underneath him. Brigid peaked through her fingers as he settled against the doorjamb to Patrick’s bedroom with his arms crossed over his chest. He sipped from his water, the moonlight rippling over the glass, and took a long moment to swallow as she squirmed.

Jack smacked his lips like he might after a draught of ale, cheeky like he’d won a round of cards. “Don’t worry — your secret’s safe with me.”

“_What?_” Brigid’s squeak hardly passed as a question, muffled around her fingers.

“You’ve had a _very_ long engagement, so I hear.” With a shrug, he toasted his glass of water to her. “To be honest, I expected to hear you sneaking out the first night I was here.”

“What — ” Brigid sputtered, gesturing wildly with her free hand as she stared at the ceiling, the chintzy old wallpaper, the fogged window — anything to avoid her smirking cousin. “And what about you, then? Where are you sneaking in from?”

Laughing, he scuffed a muddy boot on the old scratched floor. “My _job_ — Sean wanted me to close down the pub with him tonight before I do it on my own tomorrow.”

Brigid shuffled her stockinged feet, cheeks hot.

Though she knew her father had left for the factory hours ago, the hairs on the back of Brigid’s neck stood on end; she kept her voice to a whisper. “You’re enjoying the work, then?”

The moon had already climbed higher — _would Tommy even be there?_ — but her mother’s lessons were difficult to shake. Only a fortnight had passed since her father inquired about the Black Swan’s open position on Jack’s behalf, and they’d had comparatively little time to discuss it.

“Of course, I am, but — ” Jack sighed, stumbled as he kicked out of his boots, which he nudged side-by-side to the right of Patrick’s doorjamb. “We can talk about it in the morning.”

Tension had settled in his shoulders, and he masked turn of his frown with another sip of water, the expression unfamiliar on his usually genial face. Nerves twisted in Brigid’s belly as she stared, different than the dread that filled her when he appeared from the dark mouth of the stairwell.

She furrowed her brows. “What is it?”

“Ah, well, I _would_ — I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell your Da about _this_, either.” He gestured between them, his meaning plain. “Strictly speaking, I promised him I wouldn’t work the closing shift.”

“And why not?” The words came out sharp, harsher than she intended — a product of the grandfather clock that tolled midnight below, of the gooseflesh that prickled on her skin.

And as if he sensed her discomfort, Jack smirked again, shining in the dim light. “So I could keep an eye on you.”

“Christ, he thinks me a child.”

Brigid dropped her boots, heavy and solid, to the ground — for there was no need to creep down the stairs in only her stockings when she’d already been found out — with a curse and a scowl. Her father cared little that she’d spent four years keeping their mortgage paid, supplementing his meager Army pay with the sweat of her own brow. Would he ever think her a woman?

“Don’t worry,” she said, crouching to lace up her boots. “I’ve nothing to gain by letting it slip.”

“Nor do I.” Jack sighed, quashing his frown with a long draught of his water. “You’d best be back before he is, so our secrets stay safe. Don’t make me lie to Uncle Jem.”

The embarrassment that clutched her lungs in a vise grip gave way, and Brigid giggled. “I’ve years of practice sneaking out — _and_ sneaking back in, Jack.”

Across the landing, Jack’s mussed hair shone under the moonlight, the glint in his eye distinctly familiar — but he gagged as he made for Patrick’s door. “I don’t care to know.”

Her laugh followed him as he disappeared into the bedroom, and Brigid waited until the door finally shut with a soft _snick_ before she rolled the tension from her shoulders. The hot sweat of shame had left her chilled in the balmy night; she preemptively unbuttoned the high collar of her dress. With a final glance at Patrick’s bedroom door, Brigid breathed a silent prayer to her dear, departed brother.

He must have momentarily possessed their cousin, and for that, she was grateful.

Plunged into the pitch-dark parlor at the base of the stairs, Brigid followed a slim stream of moonlight to the front door. Practiced hands heaved her bag over her shoulder, but her bottom lip stung between her teeth where she chewed. Her switchblade weighed down the right-side pocket of her lovely, ermine-lined coat, which hung neatly on the last hook of the coat rack, ready to be stowed away for colder months.

_Keep that on you,_ Tommy had said. _Where you can get to it before someone can get to you._

After a pause, she scrambled for the slim, varnished blade with jittery fingers and dropped it into her pocket. Nerves twisted like barbs in her belly; gooseflesh prickled up her arms.

Tommy hadn’t asked her to visit; she hadn’t asked to stay. She’d no reason to expect he would welcome her nighttime call, or that he would be at Number Six at all. In recent weeks, he’d spent as many nights trawling the streets of Small Heath on _business_ as he had sleeping.

But where her mind fumbled with fear, her heart pounded — his broad hands at her thighs, his slim hips between them. Brigid _wanted_ him, as sorely as she ever had.

And she wanted him to _know_ it before he rubbed elbows with wealthy businessmen and their pretty daughters at the races.

It was a stupid plan — Brigid slipped out of the front door anyway.

Outside, the night was clear despite the distant rumble of thunder, the shadows fat and long under the low moon. They enveloped her with welcome arms, hiding the city’s stained bricks and scuffed cobblestones, its overworked citizens and pockmarks of poverty. Brigid often felt most accustomed to Small Heath at night, when the best of its people were tucked in their beds and the worst of them still crowded in pubs. Perhaps it was because she, too, felt caught muddled somewhere between Small Heath’s best and worst.

The air clung to her skin; a passing breeze tugged loose a dark curl that fell to tickle her shoulder. As she turned onto Watery Lane, Brigid began to pluck the long pins one-by-one from her hair, dropping them into the depths of her bag. With each one, more curls spilled. She’d made it this far — and she didn’t intend to wait for Tommy to retrieve each pin from her nest of curls before she found a better use for his hands.

Number Six’s ground floor was dark, its curtains drawn tight, the poorly-insulated window panes foggy from the damp. Her fingers trembled as she ran a hand up and through her hair, shaking out the knotted curls; Brigid felt her exhale in her toes.

In Tommy’s window, a single lamp flickered.

Brigid dodged the cracked threshold as she slipped inside, for the slightest creak could bring down an army of Shelbys bearing curses and revolvers. Shadows and glinting brass trinkets filled the crowded parlor; she navigated by memory, trailing a hand along the gilded wallpaper vines until she reached the stairwell. At the top of the stairs, the dull light snuck out from under his bedroom door.

It was too late to turn back — he would have heard her, as attuned to her as she was to him. And so she hugged the wall up the stairwell, dodging loose steps, heartbeat thrumming in her ears and fingers and toes. Brigid let her head fall back with a nervous sigh, just for a moment, before easing open his door.

_Click._

“Christ — ”

“Damnit, Bridie,” Tommy breathed. His revolver winked in the low light as he deftly de-cocked it, the barrel directed to the ceiling. Flushed, he heaved a breath, something almost wild in his eyes as he slumped forward. “What are you doing here?”

Brigid’s own breath shook over her lips, the adrenaline racing down to her trembling fingers, as she latched and locked the door behind her.

Voice soft, she said, “I wanted to see you.”

“Why?”

Clad in only trousers and an undershirt, braces loose around his waist, Tommy deposited the revolver into the open drawer of the sidetable. Amber whiskey glinted in a crystal tumbler, and he tossed it back with nary a wince. Brigid shifted, uncertain, for only a moment, before her boots and bag hit the floor with a _thunk._

“It’s just… been some time.” Brigid swallowed; gooseflesh prickled up her arms as his eyes trailed down the line of her cotton dress to her stockinged feet. “I seem to remember we had unfinished business.”

Only days had passed since that evening in the betting shop, but Brigid remembered another time. That last night before he shipped out — an unseasonably cold October, her hands underneath his coat at her front door — Tommy had promised it would be the two of them for the rest of their days. But he’d always been better with his hands than with his words; had always said more with his eyes than with his mouth.

And his eyes had watched the barmaid, Saturday last, atop her stool at the back of the pub.

Tommy’s sigh was gruff, as was the hand he ran through his mussed hair. His words grumbled like gravel underfoot. “Bridie, tonight’s not — ”

“Please, Tommy.” Brigid crossed to him on light feet, a shaking hand reaching for his whiskey, which burned all the way down her chest and into her empty belly. She’d been too busy, too nervous, to eat. “Don’t you want — ”

The tumbler clipped the tabletop as she fumbled to set it down, and Brigid’s gaze dropped to the depths of the drawer he’d forgotten to close. Crumpled papers, empty matchboxes, a loose cigarette, a small brass lamp on its side — and underneath the glinting revolver, a slim, polished wooden pipe had been haphazardly tossed. At its end was a bowl of black porcelain.

Brigid froze, considered, drew her bottom lip between her teeth. The hand curled around the mother-of-pearl button at her collar trembled. “Tom.”

His hand darted out to shove the drawer closed, but Brigid, for once, was faster — she gripped the pipe in her fist like she might a club, the pipe bowl held aloft. Eyes burning, her breath too big for her lungs, Brigid nearly shook the pipe in his face.

“What the fuck, Tommy?” Fear slipped down her spine like hot tar, her mind racing — the hollows of his cheeks and collar, the violet circles under his eyes, the black turns of his mood and the cloying scent that clung to the wallpaper. “What are you _thinking_?”

“Brigid — ”

“No!” Harsh, heart racing — the pipe clattered at her feet, barely audible over the rush in her ears. “I don’t want any fucking excuses, Thomas Shelby. You _know_ better.”

And Tommy Shelby didn’t often back down from a challenge, but his head fell into his hands to avoid her glare. His shoulders shook with a ragged breath, harsh in the quiet room.

Another long moment passed before, through his fingers, he muttered, “It helps me sleep.”

Shaking her head, Brigid rummaged through the drawer. The brass lamp; a small, sticky tin; a tinkling ring of needles and instruments — she deposited each item atop the cluttered side table as her chest rattled, as his head hung lower.

“Goddammit, Tommy.” Brigid pursed her lips, sour, as she scraped through the dusty drawer. “No. It doesn’t help you sleep. It _puts_ you to sleep. You know how many men came back to the hospital after weeks on this shit? Barely coherent, scrawny, hacking — I won’t allow it.”

“I’m sorry.” Quiet, the words rasped over her fumbling. As Brigid gathered the paraphernalia into her arms, stooping to collect the pipe, he continued. “Lots of the boys — they said it helps.”

Brigid’s cheeks burned as she dumped opium pipe and instruments into her bag, loose hair wrapping around her damp neck as if to strangle her. Just as meeting Jack on the second landing hadn’t been to plan, neither had this. Fury and an inexplicable sadness dueled in her lungs as she tried to breathe. The air was sticky with the remnants of smoke — how had she missed it? It was the same smell that clung to the clothing of the men that stumbled back into the veterans’ home — and she’d thought it another woman’s _perfume_.

She could still fix this. He hadn’t smoked that evening; his eyes were clear, his skin still flush.

“You’ll not do it again,” she said, fisting her hands into the cotton of her dress. Even the fabric was hot; she felt as if she might burn up from the inside as she avoided his gaze. Another swig of Irish swooped behind her eyes.

“I’ll not do it again.” Tommy’s hand fluttered as if to reach out for her before it fell and fisted over his knee.

Amid the crumpled notes and papers left in his bedside drawer, Brigid plucked out a single photograph. Smudged and speckled, a fingerprint of French mud stained on the creamy border — her own face stared back up at her, more youthful than she could ever remember feeling. It was the one for which she’d sat only weeks before he shipped out, before he’d slipped the delicate platinum engagement ring on her finger.

She’d rouged her cheeks and curled her hair and smiled for the camera, even though the photographer told her it was best practice not to. Her inky hair stood in stark contrast to her pale skin, the ivory of her blouse. At the time, Brigid had thought she’d never looked prettier. Six years later, she felt foolish.

Flipping it over, she found her handwriting faint from years of wear — _Come back to me._

Turning, she held it out to him. “I’m surprised you still have this.”

“Of course, I still have it.” Tommy’s fingers were oddly pale in the low light as he took it from her; his thumb trailed down her nose, across her smile. “Kept it in my breast pocket for four years.”

Shivering, almost fragile, Brigid paused — and then she was stripping her old, threadbare coat from her shoulders, tossing it over the chair behind his bedroom door. “Reminded you of home, didn’t I?”

“Yes.” He sounded parched.

Brigid’s clumsy fingers found the long line of mother-of-pearl buttons that descended the bust of her cotton dress. Her chest burned as if she’d sipped from the whiskey; her nervous stomach wished she had. And his gaze, instead of meeting hers, followed her fingers.

She curled her stockinged toes against the cold wooden floor.

“Did I keep you company in your bunk, Tom?”

Her voice barely crested a whisper, her vision narrowing to just him — his dark hair, his callused hands, the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swigged straight from the bottle. The dim room cast him in a golden glow — or it might have been the whiskey. The whiskey was certainly responsible for her words. “You think of me when you were all alone?”

“I did.”

Tommy’s hands curved around her waist, fisting in the thin cotton — with the dress unbuttoned to her navel, it gave way over her slim hips with a single tug. The chill of the room swept over Brigid, curling in her belly; a thumb trailed over her hipbone, hot through the silk of her chemise.

Brigid felt high under his gaze, ignited by the thought of him slipping a hand down his trousers with the photograph of her in the other. Swallowing, shivering, Tommy’s breath was hot on her fingertips as she traced his full bottom lip.

“You’re gonna think of me now when you can’t sleep, yeah, Tommy?” Down over his chin, across the cut of his jaw — she reflected that he needed to shave, that the stubble would catch on the silk of her chemise.

His hands mapped a path to the steel clips that held up her stockings, but his eyes never left hers — bright, burning, blown with the hint of whiskey. “I’m always thinking about you.”

“You don’t need that pipe to feel better, love.” She broke his gaze to slosh more liquor into the smudged tumbler, eager to replace the burn of emotion in her chest with something substantial. “_I_ can do that.”

Tommy’s ragged sigh tugged at the silk of Brigid’s chemise; his hands replaced the trim bodice of her dress around her waist. The valley of her breasts, the divot of her ribcage, the slope of her belly — the slow decline of his kiss sent Brigid onto her toes with a shiver. The tumbler knocked against her teeth; chilled whiskey dripped down onto her chin, neck, chest.

“That’s why you’re here?” His pale eyes followed the whiskey’s slow descent, his pale hands juxtaposed with her black stockings. “To make me feel better?”

Brigid ached, trembled, flushed — the heat of the room, the whiskey, the fingers he scratched up the back of her thigh and underneath the lace of her chemise’s hem.

Though she stood above him, Brigid felt like she was kneeling, the words tumbling out like supplication. “I’m here because I want you to fuck me, Tom.”

The slice of his smirk was wicked. “I can do that.”

Time dripped like molasses, the air of his bedroom heady and damp; fat raindrops had begun to lash at the windowpanes, the charged clouds finally cracked. Tommy’s stubble scratched against the silk of her chemise. Brigid unthreaded the slim ribbon that held its lace collar together, slipped her arms through, shivered at the cool air on her bare breasts.

Voice quiet, impatient, she said, “Let me — ”

Tommy nipped at her belly through the silk, and his mussed fringe shadowed his eyes as he stared up at her. “You know I like to do this part, Miss Murphy.”

Brigid giggled through the embarrassment, cast her eyes upward in a quick prayer.

His deft fingers made quick work of the tiny steel clips that fastened her stockings to the chemise. Neatly, as if rolling a cigarette or a stack of pennies, he folded down the first stocking inch-by-inch, and the more pale skin he bared, the hotter the flush on Brigid’s chest. She held the loose bodice of her chemise over her breasts, lips parting when he left an open-mouthed kiss above her knee.

“Up,” he said, lips brushing her freckled thigh.

Brigid lifted her foot out of the stocking; he tossed it somewhere behind her, where it landed with a soft _thud_.

His fingers trailed up her bare leg, the heat of him dreadfully, wonderfully close to the part of her that throbbed with need. The second stocking clip _clink_ed, and then the fabric fell loose, Tommy’s greedy fingers tugging it down her leg, following the elastic hem as it descended with his lush lips. In only the light of the lone lamp by the window, he looked pale and lovely, the white cut of his smirk sharp in the shadows.

Now uninhibited, Brigid’s silk chemise slipped to the floor with a whisper.

Tommy braced his hands on the bed beside him, his gaze hungry as he leaned back to take her in. Stood in front of him, Brigid felt like some sort of goddess, like a marble statue atop Birmingham’s tallest building. Her heart pounded in her throat, her ears. Fully clothed as he was, the pink on his neck disappeared below the drooping collar of his old undershirt.

Brigid fidgeted, her sigh too loud for the quiet bedroom. “How do you want — ”

But Tommy slid a hand between her legs again. This time, up the delicate inside of her thigh until he met — “Oh, God,” she choked.

His fingers slid into the heat between her legs, and Brigid nearly buckled. Heartbeat rushing in her ears, she curled a hand around his neck to hold him close. The patter of rain, the sigh that parted his lips — it drowned out the creak of the iron bed frame.

“Already ready for me, love?” Tommy stroked, curled, twisted.

She wanted to respond, but Brigid merely squeaked, shifted her hips, gaped — and then Tommy pulled away. His sinful lips closed around the two fingers retrieved from between her legs, his cheeks hollowed as he licked them clean. The sight twisted in her belly.

Parched, Brigid crumpled the cotton of his undershirt in her fists, tugging it up and up and _off_. “And you’re not.”

They fell together, a tangle of warm skin, silk, and wool. Her giggle felt too loud for the quiet room as she kicked out of her chemise, as Tommy ripped it from her feet so he could settle between her legs. The bed frame groaned, and so did Brigid — it rattled her chest and her lips as she scrambled up the bed, a foot propped on the mattress for leverage. Bared to him as she was, she might have once felt embarrassed, but modesty had long passed her by.

His open-mouthed kiss closed over the flutter of her throat, traced the trail of sticky whiskey between her breasts; syrupy desire dripped down her spine. He nosed over her navel, whispered into the pale skin of her thigh — a hand followed, found a home in the dip of her hip with force the mattress protested. The other, a different path — grazing the delicate bone of her ankle, up the curve of her calf, curling behind her knee. She fidgeted, nearly laughed — when her foot kicked out, he shouldered between her legs, touch gentle where his exhale was harsh.

A leg over his shoulder, her toes curled into the hot skin of his back — Tommy began with the subtly of a man dying of thirst. How many times had he delved between her legs, now? Sober or sloshed, morning or night — and never with any less enthusiasm. Brigid arched, curled, tried to jerk away, but he only pulled her closer. Thunder cracked; so did her breath.

“Aren’t I better than your memories, Tom?” That she could form a thought was a miracle, and the throaty words bubbled up from a place she could only reach with his mouth on her. “Than that photo?”

As her eyes fluttered, Brigid noted that the oil lamp had burned low, the shadows pitched in his dark hair and shoulder blades.

“Quiet,” he grumbled — the words vibrated, and Brigid’s hips lifted and fell, lurching like a marionette on a string.

But he wasn’t playing nice, and neither was she.

“Aren’t I better than anything the smoke can conjure up?”

Tommy hissed at the fist she tightened in his hair, and Brigid — she realized belatedly that the bed was creaking, rhythmic, that it was the wanton rock of her hips against his lush, sinful lips.

“Aren’t I better than — ” Brigid curled a hand around the icy bed frame, biting her lips.

_Than that French whore? _she had nearly said. _Than any rich girl at Cheltenham? Than — _

The _smack_ of his lips rattled the breath in her lungs, curled around the pit of desire in her belly until she trembled. “Yes, you are.” In the low light, his eyes were nearly black as he stared up from between her legs. “Now, be _quiet_.”

“_God_, Tom — ” The words tumbled, hoarse and broken — “then, please, just — _fuck _me.”

Tommy’s mouth shone in the lamplight as he inched her up the mattress, as he climbed up her body like it were a pilgrimage. The wool of his trousers scratched on her tender skin until he’d shucked them down to his ankles, and —

_Yes._

Lightheaded, Brigid’s breath escaped her lungs in gasp, pleasure crackling up her skin as if she’d been set ablaze. Every sense had become him. Her lips tasted of his whiskey and the arousal she’d left on his tongue; his cologne clung to her sticky skin, something heady and spiced like a winter toddy. Nose-to-nose, chest-to-chest, the rhythm familiar and forceful —

“C’mon, Tommy,” she whispered against his quivering lips, trailing hot, open-mouthed kisses along his salty skin, the taut curve of his neck, the shifting muscles of his shoulder. Her fingernails dug into his hip. “More, more — ”

Tommy hooked an elbow under her knee, and — she keened at the pressure, at the angle. Brigid couldn’t draw a full breath against his weight, so she settled for tasting him. The pillow dipped underneath her head where he planted his elbow for leverage; her scalp smarted where he fisted into her curls.

“_Fuck,” _Brigid gasped, every inch of her trembling as he drew her closer to the edge, as she clenched around him, and —

The hand that had been in her hair curled over her mouth, muffling her words.

Tommy’s laugh filled the sudden silence, his eyes blown wide. “You never _listen_ to me, Bridie.”

With an arm under her leg and a hand over her mouth, the pace he set was punishing. Vulnerable, Brigid groaned against his hold, rolled her hips to meet his as she relaxed into the mattress. The force of his hips — of the hand over her mouth — was a sudden, welcome reward for every lick of desire and nervous twist of her stomach that stole her from her bed and sent her running to his.

“So good for me, love.” His teeth scratched the dip of her collarbone as he gasped, and —

And Brigid’s pleasure cracked like a whip, forcing her up and into him, spine bowing against his weight as she trembled against and around him. His rhythm quick and uneven, the sinful slap of skin filled the quiet bedroom, and —

Tommy spilled inside her, face tucked into her hair; the broken whisper of her name — _Bridie, Bridie — _tickling her ear. Brigid’s thighs trembled, but she held him close between them, one leg hitched around his hip, the other hooked over his elbow, as the rush of blood in her head ebbed, as the rain returned and the chill slipped in. His hand fell from her mouth, and Brigid greedily sucked hot, heady air into her lungs. Together, they collapsed, boneless, into the bed; together, they breathed.

When he finally rolled off her, Tommy tugged her along, limbs loose and limp, until she was splayed across the plane of his chest. Her skin tingled as pleasure slipped away, slow like snowmelt dripping off a slate roof. A hand found the nest of curls at her neck, and the other traced the bare curve of her waist without purpose or motive — almost lazy, like he didn’t know what to do with his hands if not touch her.

“Thank you for coming.” Tommy finally broke the silence; he sounded almost drunk, the words clumsy in her hair. “Didn’t realize I needed you.”

Brigid planted her chin on his chest, found his cheeks still flushed. At her movement, he extracted the hand tangled in her curls to reach for the tumbler of whiskey; the amber glinted in the low light, on his lips. She kissed its remnants away, her lips still tender from the force of his grip.

“I just missed you,” Brigid admitted, shivering against the hand that trailed down her spine. The crystal glass knocked, sharp and hollow, on the bedside table in the silence. “But I — ”

_I’m sorry, fuck, I can still smell the mud, _he’d said, that first night they shared a bed after his return — the night he’d pressed the full weight of his body against her throat until her vision spotted black, nearly as black as his eyes had been.

“But…” Careful, Tommy ran a thumb along her bottom lip as if to draw out the words.

Had she been afraid — of his anger, or his rejection? This was the first evening she’d stolen into his bed without invitation, and it had been jealousy that fueled her rather than sympathy. What other nightmares and drugs had she missed, had she forced him to face alone?

Averting her eyes, Brigid stared at the gaunt dip of his collarbone instead of the cool eyes that could read her so well. “But _I_ didn’t realize how much you were struggling.”

The shame of it cracked her words, curdled in her belly — too bitter for the warm haze of the bedroom.

But Tommy shook his head, encouraging her gaze back up to his; his eyes traced down her nose and the curve of her lips like she was a painting worth his study. “I don’t need you to get in my head — ”

“Tommy — ”

“Too much mud.” Rueful, soft, Tommy’s lips twisted into a frown; the furrow of his brow deepened, and Brigid’s heart dropped. “Too many goddamn ghosts. I don’t want to think of them when I think of you.”

A flush had colored his cheeks at the admission, and underneath the heat that still licked over her skin, Brigid felt cold. She wanted to tell him that he’d fought to keep her and their country safe, and that they’d pinned medals on him for gallantry — that the _mud_ wasn’t worth his shame.

Instead, she swallowed the hard lump in her throat and ran a finger over the sunrise tattooed on his chest. “Just promise me, Tommy — _me_, not the smoke. Come to me. There’s nothing but trouble in a pipe dream.”

And Tommy didn’t speak, but he pulled her up his body until their lips were flush, until nothing but shivers and sweat-slicked skin were left between them. Breathing hushed, fingers wandering, Brigid drank him in. And as their hearts beat together, she hoped to take some of his pain and lock it up inside of her where he could never find it.

She thought he murmured something like assent into her lips.

His knee had slipped between her legs, but Brigid broke away when her lungs begged for air. Her eyes burned, but she focused on him, his soft eyes and swollen lips. “Should I go, now?”

She didn’t want to leave —

“No.” His voice was thick with sleep, and the arm curled around her back tightened, pulled her close. “Stay.”

So, she stayed.

* * *

Brigid woke with a shiver. Though her skin was still sticky with the sweat, the flimsy cotton sheet bunched around her bare waist gave little in the way of warmth. Rain lashed at the window, eerie in the otherwise silent room, pitch-black through her bleary eyes. She turned to curl into Tommy, but her cold fingers slid over the sheets to find his side of the bed warm, but bare.

“Tommy?” Voice little more than a murmur, Brigid reached further than she could make sense of — given that his bed was so slim — in an attempt to find him.

Had he left her? Had he had a nightmare?

_“Tom! Tom!”_

Brigid scrambled up in bed with a curse, scrubbing at her face through a yawn. The yell had carried in from the cobbled lane below, muffled through the rain — and crouched at the foot of the bed, bare as the day he was born, Tommy peaked through the gauzy curtains.

The image sunk in; a harsh, cold terror slinked between her shoulder blades. “Tommy, what is it?”

_“Tom, you’d better come quick! Tom!”_

Frozen, Tommy considered the disembodied words with a soldier’s suspicion. Crawling to join him, Brigid wrapped a hand around the nape of his neck, hoping to soothe the tension that had made a home there.

He didn’t even flinch, and so Brigid peeked over his shoulder. “Is that — Curly?”

His stablehand cousin-uncle-something stood below. The heavy, slate-gray rain sloshed off him in waves; a flickering lantern held aloft in one hand, he waved up at them with the other.

“I’ll need to go with him.” The sleep and the whiskey had made his voice hoarse, the words scratching together like gravel under a horse’s hooves.

Tommy heaved a sigh, navigating around her bare body as he stood, and the brush of his hands against her skin raised gooseflesh along her arms. Left to curl her legs underneath her at the foot of his bed, Brigid’s heart gaped wide with something that might have been fear.

“What is it?” The words slipped out before she could stop them, but Brigid knew what his response would be.

“Don’t know, do I?”

Though his voice was as quiet as it ever was, the words sliced through Brigid’s apprehension with all the grace of a switchblade. As he stumbled into his abandoned trousers, a rumpled dress shirt hanging loose and unbuttoned around his shoulders, Brigid slipped out of bed as well. The heavy bedroom air slinked down her spine; her teeth chattered as she stepped into her cool, silken chemise.

Tommy paused, fingers fumbling with a rebellious button at his collar, and fixed her with a stare. The blue of his eyes was too bright in the dim bedroom, too alert. “You’re not coming.”

“Like hell.”

The floor under her bare feet was cold, gritty, but Brigid judged she didn’t have time to wrangle her stockings — Tommy was already pulling on his shoes, shirt buttoned but untucked over his woolen trousers. She knew he wouldn’t wait for her, not when she was already disobeying him. In a few short seconds, she had stepped into her wrinkled dress and stumbled into her boots; though Tommy had paused to pull on his coat, Brigid did not, and she dashed down the stairs after him with the threadbare wool trailing behind her.

Watery Lane was lost in a torrent of black rain and oily bricks; the force of it stole the breath from her lungs. She followed Curly’s winking lantern as she tugged her coat around her shoulders. Tommy tucked his cap over his mussed hair, already leaning close to the stablehand — and though he hadn’t yet spared her a glance, he held out his hand for her to take. His skin was warm where the rain was cold, and she drew strength from him as she twined their fingers.

“What’s wrong, Curly?” Ducking her head, Brigid tugged damp curls from the collar of her dress, spitting out rain.

Curly stuttered, shaking his head between them as the lantern swayed. “It’s Tom’s horse, yeah, Miss Birdie,” Curly said, turning to hustle down the slick cobblestoned lane with little fanfare. The words echoed behind him. “Yeah, yeah, Tom’s horse.”

The blocks between Number Six and Charlie’s scrapyard passed in a blur of rain and black brick. How much time had passed since she arrived in Tommy’s bedroom, since she’d fallen apart underneath him and fell asleep tucked into his ribcage? With the moon hidden, and the night as dark as ever, time seemed frozen. Tommy hurried to keep up with Curly, and Brigid’s boots, though low and sensible, were not kind on the slippery cobblestones.

Only Charlie’s barn was lit, blinking ahead of them like the light at the end of a canal tunnel; Curly led them, muttering high and panicked under his breath as he was wont to do. Brigid nearly toppled over when they crossed through the gate and onto the slick gravel, and only Tommy’s strong arm around her waist kept her from taking them both down.

In the end, she’d never been more grateful, even in her fear, for the warmth and wooden floorboards of Charlie’s barn. Blinking against the sudden light, Brigid swiped wet, cold hair from her face, hovering by the barn door to take in the scene.

Charlie Strong sat on a rickety wooden stool, a tobacco pipe perched in his frown; the light of another lantern danced in the deep lines of his face. In front of him was Tommy’s horse — the horse that had drawn Tommy and his brothers out of Small Heath and left the city vulnerable to Inspector Campbell’s raid.

Days passed before Brigid finally met the horse, and when she did, even she had to admit that he was beautiful. Long, lean, his white coat almost silver in the weak morning light, the horse had snorted when she drew close, pranced away on proud hooves. Tommy assured her he was still getting accustomed to the smoke and gravel of Small Heath.

But now, next to Charlie’s perch, the horse stood on only three legs in the mess of hay; one of his front hooves curled up as if injured, suspended off the muddy floor by a thick leather strap. When Curly approached, the horse — still without a name — didn’t even toss his mane. His black eyes, glossy in the dim light, stared ahead.

Tommy crouched to observe in the offending hoof with sure hands and a furrowed brow.

Brigid, however, remained by the door. Something wry marrying his expression, Charlie tipped his cap at Brigid, and fear curdled her belly. Tommy’s maternal uncle had never been kind, per se, though Tommy spent years assuring her that he treated everyone with the same obligatory gruffness. That he now acknowledged her with such familiarity only strengthened the anxiety that crawled up Brigid’s throat.

“Curly.” Tommy swiped his wet hair out of his eyes, fixing the stablehand with a hard, wide-eyed stare. “Tell me.”

The horse’s hot exhale curled up between the two men, and Curly, as if the truth of it should have been evident, pointed to the hoof. “It’s a curse, Tom.”

The admission sent Curly in a spiral — he backed away on unsteady feet, hands shaking as he drew them to his chest. He darted to the barn door as if to step into the night, though Brigid wasn’t certain if he remembered it was raining. She caught him by his wet, shuddering shoulders, and met his eyes as he stooped, tall yet childlike.

Brigid shushed him, whispering, “Curly, it’s all right, dear.”

“Bad, _bad_ curse, Miss Birdie.” Curly’s dark, suspicious eyes darted from her to the black mouth of the barn over her shoulder. The lantern popped, and he startled again. “Bad, bad.”

Tommy drew closer, shoulder-to-shoulder with Brigid, and cupped a hand around the back of Curly’s head like he so often did with Finn, as he might with a startled, unsteady foal. Though his expression had softened, determination still hardened his eyes.

“Tell me, Curly,” he repeated, softer this time. “What’s wrong with the horse?”

The golden signet ring on his little finger winked in the low light, the same as the hoop swinging in Curly’s ear. Tommy might not have pierced his ears, but now, speaking of curses in the night, he was as Gypsy as the rest of them.

Curly shook a trembling finger at Tommy, eyes bright and scared. “You bought it at the fair in bad feeling. The Lees put a bad seed in the hoof — got an old woman to put a spell!”

He continued to mumble, something that swooped between low and high pitches that Brigid could hardly parse, but Tommy released him with a ragged sigh. The hay muffled his sharp heels as he approached; clad in his black coat, silhouetted by the pale horse, he might have been a curse himself.

“So, those Lee bastards cursed him.” Gruff, he examined the horse’s tied hoof again, pale face turned down.

Charlie snuffed his pipe and approached his nephew in the same breath as Brigid. “Whatever it is,” he said, voice akin to a growl, “he says it spread to the other feet.”

Brigid looped a trembling hand around Tommy’s elbow; with no reaction from him, she might have been a ghost by his side. Lost in thought, Tommy scrubbed his hands up and over his face.

“Tommy — ” Brigid broke off her own whisper, uncertain —

“It’s going to his heart by tomorrow, I say,” Curly warned, frantic, drawing closer before pacing away again. “Seen curses like this twice!”

When Tommy pulled his hands away, the red scrape of his fingers was the only color left on his face. His lips gaped open as if speechless; the unfamiliar look froze Brigid’s heart. The horse snorted, tossed his mane — he swayed as if to stomp, to free his hoof from the tourniquet Curly had bound to stop the curse with the blood flow.

She knew where this was going, and frightened tears spilled over onto her cold, rain-stained cheeks. “Tommy, you don’t know that anything is truly wrong with the horse — ”

“ — can’t take them back, Tom! No!” Curly still paced.

“I told you, Tommy,” Charlie said with a grim purse of his lips — the man had never held back an _I told you so_, and he didn’t seem keen to stop today. “Better enemies to have than black-blood Gypsies.”

Brigid’s gasp was hot and shadowy in the barn’s gloom, her tears salty on her lips. “The horse looks _fine_, Charlie.”

Eyes harsh, Charlie spat and knocked his snuffed pipe against the horse’s stall. The ash glittered as it sprinkled at his feet. “Nothing fine about a horse bought in war.”

Brigid shrunk, her shoulders hunched under Charlie’s glare, and knew she had lost — that the horse had lost, that the horse had never had a goddamn chance. She bit her lips to hold in a sob as the stallion shook its mane again, and when Tommy broke away, she could still feel the phantom of his racing heart in her fingertips.

Tommy’s mind, the black part of him that dreamed in curses and spirits and molten Romany, had already fallen into a place Brigid couldn’t follow. Her God didn’t deal in curses, but —

The little part of Tommy’s — the part he still knew — did.

She tried anyway. “Tommy, love, you don’t have to — ”

“Get out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, let me know what you think! there's no better motivation than comments :)
> 
> [tumblr](https://aryaflint.tumblr.com/)?


	12. xii.

“Get out.” Tommy’s eyes flashed to Brigid — dark, wide, _scared — _before returning to the horse. “Brigid, get out. Curly, Charlie — out.”

“No.”

Brigid dug her fingers into the flesh of Tommy’s forearm, clinging if to pull him straight from the mouth of hell. In the same moment, an unfamiliar hand locked around her elbow.

Jerking, she grit out, “Let _go _— ”

“C’mon, girl.” Charlie’s tone, thick as smoke, brooked no argument as he wrenched her from Tommy. “Let him take care of it.”

The force took her by surprise. Brigid slipped on the hay, lost her grip, and hissed in pain as Charlie frogmarched her from the dimly lit stall, as his fingers dug deeper into the crease of her elbow. A black sheet of rain rushed over the eave of the barn; Charlie forced her through, and it swallowed the horse’s snort, Tommy’s ragged sigh, the lamplight.

“Charlie — ” Spluttering, Brigid spat through the rain that dripped from her nose and lips, down her neck and under her collar to her racing heart. “He doesn’t have to kill the horse.”

She lurched away from him, and Charlie let her. Little more than a shadow through the storm, nothing but a black cap and a grimace silhouetted by the barn’s light — he knew she wouldn’t cross him, and she didn’t.

“No use begging, _gadji_.”

_Gadji_ — non-Gypsy, outsider. It had been the first thing Charlie called her, all those years ago, when Brigid first met him as Tommy’s girl instead of Patrick’s kid sister. And even now, through the black rain, his meaning was clear.

The older man shouldered by her and rasped, “Has to be done — it’s a kindness.”

He left Brigid gasping for air, drenched to the bone in her threadbare coat.

Beyond the curtain of black rain, lamplight danced. Brigid paced closer to the mouth of the barn; hesitant, she backed away —

And a gunshot rang, followed by a tumble of sounds — a _thump_ of dead weight; startled stomping and neighs of the other horses; a ragged, horrible sob. It stole her breath, nearly brought her to her knees in the sharp gravel. Instead, Brigid braced herself against the waterlogged barn, crossed her arms over her chest as if to hold in her heart. Hot tears mixed with the cold rain on her cheeks.

What had Charlie said?

A kindness.

The Shelbys ate, slept, prayed — just as she did. Brigid could, perhaps too easily, forget the superstition that had their throats in a vise, that put a bullet in the brain of a beautiful, willful horse all for a bad seed in its hoof. The memory of the stallion prancing around the scrapyard like a spirit from another realm, that watery morning only a fortnight ago now, made Brigid bite down on her bottom lip until the acrid taste of blood flooded her mouth.

Another spirit appeared, but this time, it was Tommy himself. Hunched, he staggered across the gravel yard, the pale skin of his cheeks shining through the black night. Brigid scrambled to follow on unsteady feet; the rain still lashed, so heavy she almost lost him.

“Tommy!” Her voice broke, lost in the storm.

Tommy didn’t turn, his shoulders shook, and he’d disappeared around the corner out of Charlie’s gate before Brigid finally caught up with him. When he stepped off the curb into the slick street, she stumbled, clutching his elbow as if to weigh him down — he would often do her the courtesy of slowing down when they walked together to allow for their difference in height, but tonight, there was no such chivalry.

Colder than the rain, he gasped, “Go home.”

“No.” He tried to jerk away, but Brigid fisted the soaked wool of his coat. “Tommy, no.”

“Brigid, leave me alone.”

His voice scratched like a longboat’s hull against the concrete canal — sharp, dreadful, raising gooseflesh on the back of her neck. Again, he attempted to lurch away, but Brigid clutched his lapels in her hands, jerking him close to the terraced houses and under a long row of eaves that might spare them from the torrent.

“I’m not leaving you like this,” she whispered. When she pressed a hand to his cheek, she found his skin burning under the rainwater. “Let’s go home, love.”

Thunder cracked, rattling the windows and Brigid’s teeth, and finally, setting his jaw, he nodded.

When they finally turned onto Watery Lane, the candle in Tommy’s bedroom window still flickered low; it welcomed them like a warm set of hands.

The heat of recent days meant no fires had been lit in Number Six that evening, nor had a pan of hot coals been placed at the foot of Tommy’s bed, but a chill had swept in with the rain regardless. By the time they had climbed the stairs to his bedroom, full-bodied shivers wracked Brigid in her soaked cotton dress. Tommy, shaking like a leaf, immediately stumbled from his boots, shucked his trousers and shirt to the floor, where they landed with a wet _slap_. With more care, Brigid tossed her coat over his open wardrobe door. Her dress, the soft blue cotton now dark navy from the rain, she folded over the bed’s footboard.

And Tommy, naked and leaned carelessly across the bed as if he were a sculptor’s muse, tipped his head for a sip of whiskey straight from the glinting bottle. His face was shadowed, his eyes dark.

Brigid wrestled the bottle from him, and the whiskey burned all the way down to her belly, warm and live.

“’S good, isn’t it?” The syllables were clumsy on his tongue, distracted; his eyes fell from her twisted mouth to the flutter of her throat.

When Brigid handed it back, he drained the last drop of whiskey. “How are you feeling?”

The bottle clipped, hollow, on the bedside table; his free hand curled around her bare waist, encouraging her closer, and —

And Brigid hadn’t intended for it to happen again. Perhaps foolishly, she had hoped they would talk about it, that she could keep him from drowning in the guilt and the regret and the French mud, but —

But the whiskey rushed to her head, and it wasn’t the liquor that warmed her up.

It began with the force of a factory _clang_ — lips dragging, hands pulling, gasps filling the little space left between them. They tumbled in a fog of tangled limbs and damp, sticky skin, and for the second time that night, Brigid found herself braced underneath Tommy as he sunk into her.

“_God,_” she whispered, scrambling for purchase —

The abandoned whiskey bottle cracked on the wooden floorboards, and Brigid startled. He groaned into her neck when she clenched around him, when she tried to look over the edge of the bed. “Tommy, the bottle…”

But he kept his eyes closed and kissed her again, tasting of whiskey and salt and rain. “Already broken.”

_Me, not the smoke._ This wasn’t about her. So she arched into him and closed her eyes, too.

When he finished and rolled away with an arm thrown over his face, chest heaving and damp skin flushed, Brigid tried not to hold it against him. Though the bed was thin enough that the length of his body was still pressed against her, it felt as if he was far away.

Chewing on her lip, Brigid held in a sigh, allowed herself only a moment of embarrassment, as the promise of her own climax slipped away, before she slipped her fingers down to rub between her legs. Slick with her arousal and his release, it took only a few strokes before she sent herself over the edge, trembling, clenching, letting out a breathy sigh.

But her skin prickled. Rolling her head to the side, Brigid found Tommy watching her; the liquor had blown his eyes wide.

Rough, he whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.” Damp curls stuck to her forehead, Brigid kicked a foot under the sheet they’d shucked down to the foot of the bed, for the cold of the evening had replaced the heat of the moment. “Let’s just go to sleep.”

She didn’t have it in her to judge him for forgetting her pleasure, not when he’d still come home with her, not when he could have easily slipped away and found comfort in a warm pub. Tommy helped her with the sheet and the quilt; his liquor-clumsy hands slipped around her bare waist to pull her close to his chest, and he tucked his face into her hair. Exhaustion swept over her in waves, tugging her down — how many hours had passed since she first stole into his bed? Her eyes fell shut, but Tommy’s lips found the shell of her ear.

“I got word to Freddie,” he said, voice heavy, like the words weighed on his chest, “about Ada. He’ll be back for her tomorrow.”

The relief was nearly as cleansing as the rain. Propping herself up on an elbow, pushing back her hair, Brigid searched for his eyes, and she found them focused on her.

“Thank you.”

But he leaned up to press a lazy kiss to the curve of her mouth, slow as if he wanted to drink her in. “It was for you — not for him.”

“Still,” Brigid whispered into his lips, curling a hand around the nape of his neck, “_thank you_.”

Tommy nodded, just slightly, and nosed along her cheekbone until he had buried his face once more in her hair. Within moments, his breathing slowed, his sweat-slicked muscles heavy and slack against her; and, wrapped in his arms, Brigid felt something like faith settle in her belly for the first time in weeks.

* * *

Morning came too soon, as it was wont to do. Sunlight streamed through the gauzy lace curtains, stretching over Brigid’s bare skin; she blinked slowly, wrinkled her nose. Tommy was still pressed against every curve of her body, the long line of slick skin between them a testament to the morning warmth and the midnight heat. He’d tucked a hand in the dip of her waist, fingers spread over the plane of her belly. His steady breathing, slow and steady, tickled her neck.

Their late night still weighed in her muscles, in the headache behind her eyes; Brigid wished for nothing more than to join him in sleep again. Turning in his arms, she nosed along his collar —

Until cold dread slinked down her spine, as visceral as a pale of icy water tipped over a door head.

The bedroom was too bright, the lane outside too busy. Children hopscotched below in time with a rhyme, their heeled shoes clicking on the cobblestones; a cart rumbled by, its wares creaking and clinking.

“Tommy.”

Brigid’s voice was hardly more than a croak, her throat dry and voice shot. His hum, low in his throat, vibrated against her lips; her skin prickled as a hand slid down her lower back and over the curve of her bare bottom.

Shivering, she tried again. “Tommy, wake up. It’s late.”

“’S all right.” Smacking his lips, he sounded as parched as she felt.

Brigid fought his hold to sit up in bed — what was she forgetting? They’d left the bedroom in disarray, wet clothing tossed over every available surface, muddy boots kicked aside; the abandoned whiskey cork hovered over the lip of the bedside table. Squinting against the daylight, Brigid peeked over the edge of the bed to find the heavy whiskey bottle broken into three jagged pieces.

Though Tommy’s eyes were still closed, his hand trailed, almost brazen, over the pale skin of her thigh. His touch brought gooseflesh to her arms, a warm, syrupy desire to her belly — but something was still _wrong_. It pounded at the back of her head, stronger than the throb of last night’s whiskey, as if begging her to remember —

“Tommy!” Hissing, Brigid whirled around and shook him until he opened his red-rimmed eyes. Fear clenched her heart. “Ada’s appointment — they’re going to Cardiff today!”

And Freddie was coming back.

Tommy stretched like a sunlit cat as he sat up, running a hand through his mussed hair. “What time’s it?”

His glowing watch-face, abandoned on the bedside table, indicated that it was half-eight, and Brigid’s heart sank — dark and dreadful and too heavy. The morning train to Cardiff left at eight sharp. They’d failed.

_She_ had failed.

“Shit.” Brigid’s head fell into her hands, and the world spun, last night’s liquor bitter on the back of her tongue. “It’s too late.”

Eyes burning, Brigid choked, bracing herself to halt the quick rush of bile. The thin mattress creaked under Tommy — searching for the time himself, certainly — but the despair had hardened into a pit in Brigid’s belly. After everything — every promise to Ada, to _herself_, that she’d never let Ada know what she’d gone through — Brigid had let the late night and the whiskey and _Tommy_ get to her.

And Ada, now, was the one who would suffer.

“C’mon.”

Tommy’s hand found its way into the nest of curls at her neck, fingers hot against her sticky skin, and encouraged her to look up at him. “We can send a telegram.”

“What?” Tears had filled her eyes, and so his figure was blurry as he slipped from the bed on unsteady feet.

Pale in the bright morning light, he crossed to his wardrobe. “We can send a telegram to Cardiff — catch them at the station.”

As if an electric shock had shot down her spine, Brigid jumped to her feet; she shivered as a wave of curls tickled her bare shoulders and elbows. “Right.” Renewed with purpose, jittery fingers swept her hair from her face, sleep from her eyes. “Right — let’s go.”

Her cotton dress was still damp, frigid and stiff, where it hung over the iron footboard, as was her chemise. The memory of the night’s cold rain — of the chill that had sent them tumbling back into bed with the intent of warming each other up — slid down her spine. A shiver wracked her chest as Brigid fumbled with the cold silk. There was nothing to be done, after all.

There was no time to be spared to fetch a fresh outfit, not with Ada’s future on the line.

But she must have cursed under her breath as she stepped into the icy chemise, because Tommy’s fingers curled in the damp, ruched waistband, warm against the soft skin of her waist. “Go get something of Ada’s. You’ll catch your death if you wear this.”

“You sound like Polly.” Brigid’s teeth chattered just once before she could grit them together; nevertheless, she observed his fresh cotton shirt with envy. “There’s no time.”

Tommy rolled his eyes, tugging the silk ribbon at her bust loose — perhaps the first time he had done so with no ulterior motive. “It’s a two-hour train ride to Cardiff, and the Gloucester station workers are striking. I promise there’s time for you to find something that isn’t wet with yesterday’s rain.”

He cupped her jaw with a gentleness that was almost foreign on him these days, not when his hands had done so much harm. Rolling her lips between her teeth, Brigid paused, words stuck in her throat. His gaze had softened, the faint pink lines of the pillowcase fading on his cheek. It made him look younger.

Brigid finally nodded.

“Good.” Tommy fetched the dressing gown that hung on the inside of his wardrobe and tossed it to her with little fanfare. “Besides, no woman of mine is going into town in yesterday’s clothes.”

“Fuck off.” Her fist collided with his shoulder in time with the soft laugh he exhaled.

The dressing gown, which hung to the floor on her much smaller frame, warmed her from the outside, but the grin on his face settled around her heart.

Brigid found Ada’s bedroom at the top of the old, dark stairwell, directly above Tommy’s on the next landing. Her wardrobe had leaked out onto the landing — kitten heels and laced boots were piled beside the door. Inside, satins and silks and cottons exploded from the armoire; the bed was a mess of rumpled sheets and quilts, furs and sequins and beads. The vanity glittered with dozens of crystal perfume bottles, the worktop dusted with compact powder.

The sight of it twisted Brigid’s lips into a frown — for Ada was a neat person, and she’d been too preoccupied to stay that way.

It took Brigid too long to find something that would fit her. As she dug through the dregs of Ada’s wardrobe, anxiety crept up her shoulders and made a home there. She finally unearthed a dark, beaded dress that, on Ada, would swish about her knees in the modern fashion, but on Brigid, fell to a modest calf-length. It felt too flirtatious for the day, for their reality, but it had a sash that would allow her to tighten it around her slim waist and matched the one pair of clean stockings in Ada’s drawer.

In Ada’s clothes from her shawl to her knickers, Brigid met Tommy on the landing below; he’d dressed in a lovely pressed suit of gray wool, his pocket square embroidered with her neat stitches.

“They’ll have taken the car,” he said, holding out his hand to take her gloved fingers between his, “so we’ll be walking.”

Brigid tugged him closer, close enough to feel his warmth down the length of her body, to look at his watch. “Is there enough time?”

Nine had already passed them by, and Brigid was well-acquainted with the cobblestoned path to the post office, heaving trekked it every other day for four years with long, winding letters addressed to _Sergeant Major Thomas Shelby, 1__st__ Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment_ — recounting her day and whatever drama the Shelbys had found themselves in; describing her dreams of him, the good and the bad; and always, _always_ asking him to stay safe, to stay smart, to come home to her.

Tommy’s brows raised in a challenge. “Never known you to admit defeat.”

And Brigid, despite the nerves that welled up in her throat, gave a laugh that loosened the tension in her shoulders. “Let’s go.”

But below in the parlor, the front door opened in a flurry of motion. The door rattled on its hinges; the entrant cursed, knocking what sounded like a market basket against the doorjamb. Heels clicked against the hard oaken floor.

“Polly?”

Alarmed, Brigid peeked over the banister but lacked a proper view to confirm her suspicion. The wind slammed the door, rattling the foundation of Number Six.

A sigh that was undeniably Polly’s echoed from below, followed by, “_Didn’t think the two of you would be up this early, given how little sleep you got!”_

Heat crawled up Brigid’s neck to her cheeks and ears, and Tommy, the bastard that he was, laughed in her ear. The insistent hand at her waist nudged her forward, but as her initial embarrassment faded, Brigid needed little encouragement. She found herself skipping down the stairs, feeling almost eager.

Polly hadn’t made it to Cardiff — but had Ada?

The older woman had busied herself with throwing open the kitchen curtains, revealing smudged, smoky windows and the bright back garden. She was dressed smartly but plainly, her gray suit and navy hat inconspicuous. At the center of the kitchen table, a market basket overflowed.

Under normal circumstances, Brigid might have busied herself with it — unwrapping hard bread and organizing the collection of heavy root vegetables Polly favored, salting the beef and tying up the herbs by the small window over the sink basin. But she could only stare as Polly took off her hat, stripped off her gloves, and fixed them with a prim look. Tommy’s hand lingered at Brigid’s back, but she twisted her fingers together, uncertain.

“What are you doing here, Pol?” Tommy’s voice was gruff, far removed from the soft tone with which he had teased her not minutes before. “Where’s Ada?”

Surely the girl hadn’t traveled to Cardiff herself, not without the firm grip of Aunt Polly around her wrist to keep her on the train — she’d admitted as much the night before, sequestered in a corner of the parlor. She’d teared up when Brigid asked after her, said, _Polly had better keep an eye on me, Bridie, because I might toss myself from the train._

Polly ignored Tommy’s inquiry; instead, her dark eyes landed on Brigid, hard and inscrutable. “I’ll admit, I didn’t think you could do it.”

“Do what?” Brigid twisted Tommy’s ring around her finger, fearful of giving in to the hope that flickered in her belly.

“Freddie met us at the train station,” Polly said, matter-of-fact. “Said you tipped him off, Thomas.”

A grin split Brigid’s face, her heart leaping to her throat — Tommy’s sigh ruffled the hair at her temple —but Polly continued before she could speak. “Said you told them to get out of town.”

Crestfallen, Brigid turned to Tommy, attempting to ignore the trail of his hand along her waist, and furrowed her brow. “Why must they leave town, Tommy?”

“Yes,” Polly interjected, her voice just shy of forceful, “why must they leave, Tommy?”

Tommy’s impassive eyes slid from Brigid to over her shoulder, his hand dropping from the dip of her waist. Wetting his lips, he dug inside his suit pocket for his cigarette tin, let the silence drag between them — pregnant like the moment before a storm cloud breaks, like a long hour pressed into a single, heavy minute — as he propped a cigarette between his lips.

A match flared. “Freddie is one strike away from losing his job at the B.S.A. If he’s going to provide for her, they need to go somewhere he isn’t known as a communist.”

Behind Brigid, Polly snorted as she dug through the basket; her low heels clicked as she strode with purpose to the pantry. But Brigid’s heart, beating double-time, was sinking, the brief flare of hope turning cold.

“If they’re not in Birmingham, we can’t _help_ them, Tommy.” She could only think of Ada — her dear, sweet, naive Ada, whose belly would grow round without a woman she trusted to help her, who hadn’t known a mother figure that didn’t dabble in harsh words or spirits (liquid or otherwise). “Ada’s so young — why should she be sent off to handle this all on her own?”

Tommy’s exhale was thick and heady with tobacco. “Just last week,” he said, gruff, “you were arguing that she was an adult who deserved to make her own decisions.”

“And forcing her out of the city is letting her make her own decisions?”

Brigid’s mouth had fallen agape, her pulse a rush in her ears. Had she already missed them? The train had left, and not with Polly aboard, but that didn’t mean that Ada and Freddie —

“How could you, Tommy?” Brigid curled a hand in his lapel so he couldn’t step away, forcing him to face her disappointment. “She’s family. Her babe will be family — and we don’t get to meet it?”

“Oh, you’ll get to meet it.” Polly’s heels clicked again, drawing closer. “They didn’t get on the train.”

And Brigid whirled around just in time to catch the hint of a smirk along the older woman’s dark lips before her mouth flattened once more.

“What?” Tommy’s eyes widened — a rare show of surprise — through his thick exhale of smoke.

But Brigid, not for the first time that morning, allowed herself to hope.

Polly began unloading a pound of brown potatoes from the bottom of the basket to join the carrots and beets that littered the scratched old table. Each _clunk_ sounded between the beats of Brigid’s heart, heavy and potent in her chest.

“I _said_,” Polly quirked a brow, her expression wry, “they didn’t get on the train. Freddie wouldn’t leave — said he wanted to get married in Birmingham, have his kid in Birmingham. It’s as much his city as ours, Thomas.”

“Fucking — ”

The open exclamation was unfamiliar on Tommy, and he seemed to realize it as soon as Brigid. When she turned, it was to find him gritting his teeth, the twitch of his jaw the only sign of his frustration.

A smile curled on Brigid’s face, but it wasn’t intended to be a show of victory — she merely found herself unable to contain the warmth that puddled in her chest. The sunlight streaming in through the back window cast them in a bright, late morning glow, and Brigid felt it from her ears to her toes.

“Freddie’ll find a job, Tom,” the syllables curving upward with her grin. “He’s not stupid. He knows he has to provide for her, and he wouldn’t have come back if he wasn’t prepared to do that.”

Tommy knew, as well as she did. Freddie had once been nothing but another skinny Small Heath boy, his overcoat too big and his shoes too worn, too bold for his station — just like the rest of them. He’d haunted street corners with the Shelbys, nipped wallets with Patrick; he’d sold papers and scrap metal and anything else to put food on the table for his aging mother, who had made those delicious berry tarts every summer. Brigid had danced with him, pressed together in the heat of the Garrison that long-ago spring evening, her with her lips painted red and him with his shoes shined, when Tommy cut in for the first time.

Freddie had spent as much time under the French mud as Tommy. He would do right by Ada.

“And what’s the matter with that, Thomas?” asked Polly as Brigid trailed her fingers down the length of Tommy’s arm to twine them with his.

But Tommy shook his head, dodging her hand. His cigarette had smoldered to a stub as they stood, and he took one last drag before brushing by her to snuff it in an ashtray on the sideboard. While not an outright dismissal, the sight of him seared Brigid’s chest, a hot ache that bled down into her belly.

Her fingers still tingled with his warmth; they twisted his ring around her finger.

Tommy turned, his eyes almost cold. “Where are they, Pol?”

Brigid wanted to reach out and make him look at her — to remind him that they had already lost so much, _too_ much; that they didn’t deserve to lose their little sister as well.

Polly’s lips pursed, delicate, around a slim cigarette of her own, and she murmured, “I don’t know.”

“Polly — ”

“They left from the station.” Polly’s tone brooked no argument; she looked almost ghostly through the cloud of smoke that settled around her like an evening mist. “You found him once. Do it again, if it means that much to you.”

Tommy grit his teeth; the lines of his face darkened. He wasn’t old — at barely twenty-nine, anyone else would still be bright with the shine of youth — but at that moment, he looked ancient, like a thousand years of responsibilities and memories and troubles had settled onto his shoulders and finally begun to weigh him down. Brigid remembered how he had trembled under her fingers last night, how his wet shoulders had shaken in the middle of the lane as he cried over the horse he convinced himself to kill.

That fragility was gone, and Tommy’s face was hard when he swept from the room.

Brigid’s face burned as he retreated through the sunlit parlor and out the front door. Frozen, she had barely turned to Polly before the older woman was rustling around in the bottom of her basket once more. But this time, instead of producing a fat brown potato, she held a slip of crinkled parchment aloft.

Her dark eyes met Brigid’s green, and when Brigid didn’t move, Polly shook the paper. “Here — their address.”

Brigid was reaching out before she understood. “How did you — ”

“Followed ‘em home,” Polly said, crisp. Cigarette perched between two slim fingers, she exhaled again. “I’ll figure out what’s crawled up his arse — you go see Ada. She’s got nothing to wear for her wedding.”

As she took in the slip of parchment and the address of a small flat on Coventry Lane, Brigid felt her lips twist into a frown — and she wondered how it had become her duty to dig through Ada’s expansive wardrobe for a wedding dress.

* * *

The reality of her situation — frizzy, poorly-tamed hair; wearing Ada’s dress instead of her own; returning home well after daybreak — didn’t dawn on Brigid until the tumblers of her front door’s lock didn’t give way under her key.

_You’d best be back before he is, so our secrets are safe._

The door was already unlocked, and she was fucked.

Brigid froze, muffling a curse, balancing her weight with a sigh. The cracked leather handle of Ada’s suitcase cut at her fingers, but Brigid hoisted it higher as she crept over the threshold. Though the parlor’s curtains had been thrown back, the front room was dim, no lamps lit. Sunlight fell over the door to the kitchen from the back window; dust motes floated, undisturbed.

Could she creep up to her bedroom without waking her father?

Heart in her throat, Brigid muffled the doorknob as she shut the door behind her. The soft _snick_ was still unbearably loud in the quiet house, as was the _thunk_ of Ada’s case next to the coat rack. Brigid winced, paused, let the house settle —

_“Brigid?”_

_Fuck._

The speculative, almost accusatory, tone of her father’s voice cut Brigid to half her true age. When was the last time he’d said her name with such paternal force? It had once hollered down the lane, ordering her to come home and help with supper; grumbled under his breath when he tripped over the mess of dollies and jacks she’d strewn across the back garden.

Brigid’s nervous fingers twirled back a loose curl, flattened her damp fringe. “Yes, Da?”

As she crossed the parlor to the back of their terraced house, Brigid gulped. In the mid-morning kitchen light, her father sat at the head of the table in his usual seat, a half-empty cuppa and plate of buttered toast in front of him, but he stared at her. The downturn of his mouth was sharp, his eyes hard; the soot on his face darkened the fine wrinkles there. How long had it been since her father looked at her with such disapproval?

When he spoke, the syllables cracked together like gravel underfoot. “Where have you been?”

Delicately, Brigid crossed to the teakettle and began to prepare a spare teacup painted with yellow daisies. Busying her hands kept her from facing her father — and the judgment in his frown.

“Watery Lane.” Her voice cracked, a product of the late evening and even later morning; Brigid licked her lips before continuing. “Polly needed… The children are ill, you know. They’ve got that awful cough.”

“She needed help with the children before half-seven this morning?”

Brigid fumbled, distinctly uncomfortable, through the cupboard for the tin of loose tea leaves and hoped the steaming teacup could explain the hot flush on her cheeks. “They haven’t been sleeping well — from the cough.”

It wasn’t a lie. The children _hadn’t_ been sleeping well, their weak lungs rattling with every hack and gasp; she _had_ gone to Watery Lane early — _yesterday_ morning — to help Polly bathe them and change the sheets.

“And she — ”

Brigid prattled on, dumping far too many leaves into her teacup. “Finn came to fetch me — ”

_Smack!_

The porcelain plate and teacup on their old scratched table rattled with the force of her father’s fist, and Brigid jumped, shoulders raising to nearly her ears.

“Damnit, Brigid Eleanor Murphy, you stop this lying.”

And when Brigid finally turned to meet his gaze, she might have been ten years old again — skulking home just after dark, late for supper after an hour of skipping rocks on the Cut with Martha and deliberately ignoring the calls to _get home this instant!_ James Murphy’s green eyes — the grassy green they shared, that had shone in Patrick’s hazel when he was particularly happy, that always felt like home — blazed.

But Brigid stomped forward, setting her jaw, and placed her teacup on the table. She’d always known this might happen, that so long as she snuck into Tommy Shelby’s bed as an unmarried woman she might —

She was determined to behave as if nothing were amiss. “I’m not lying.”

It had always been a gamble she was willing to make.

“Of course, you are.” His chair scraped against the floor as he stood, raising the hair on Brigid’s arms, and she was, for the first time in a long time, reminded of how tall her often-fatigued father was. “You’ve barely looked me in the eye since you came through that door. You weren’t here when I got home — ”

“I _work_, Da!” Brigid crossed her arms, itching to brush aside the loose curl that had fallen in her face. “I’m often not here when you get home.”

Almost lazy, her father gestured to the dark beaded dress, to the loose sash drooping at her waist. “And how often do you come home wearing Ada Shelby’s clothes?”

How had he known? Had Jack betrayed her confidence and relayed the details of their untimely meeting on the second landing? Or had it been something foolish of her own doing?

Hot embarrassment slunk down her spine, viscous as tar. “Da — ”

“With your hair like a rat’s nest?”

Brigid deflated with a heavy sigh, for surely the game was up — her father knew, as well as she did, that she was particularly fastidious about her hair. And after the rain and whiskey and sex, her best attempt to tame it had not been enough.

Cheeks burning, she crossed her arms over her chest as if her fluttering lungs might escape. “I’m sorry,” she said, hardly more than a whisper.

She’d never wanted to be _that_ daughter — disobedient, defiant, _loose._

But before he could speak, Jack’s thundering steps on the stairs disrupted the tension between them. He appeared not a moment later clad in a simple gray suit, the morning light fractured in his red hair, and paused on the last step.

His blue eyes darted between them as if he were watching a tennis match; then, they lingered on her.

“So, you admit to it, then?” The soot lines on her father’s wrinkled forehead deepened when his brows raised. “Sneaking out, when your cousin slept in the next room? Spending the evening with Tommy — to whom you still aren’t married? _Lying_ to me?”

With every word he growled, Brigid’s heart crawled further and further up her throat until she felt as if she could hardly breathe. On the table, a single wisp of steam curled up from the glossy veneer of her tea; she watched twist and rise until it had disappeared into the morning sunlight.

_Sneaking out, when your cousin slept in the next room — _

Jack hadn’t given her up. He’d done exactly as he said he didn’t want to do — lied to his Uncle Jem.

Brigid caught his gaze over her father’s shoulder — a quick flash of blue — and cleared her throat to speak clearly. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, “for everything. It wasn’t proper.”

With her father’s exhale, Jack finally descended the last step; he brushed by Brigid to busy himself with the teakettle, just as she had done. But her father, as if satisfied with her answer, sunk into his abandoned kitchen chair and reached for his teacup.

“It wasn’t.” He slurped from the tepid tea, his other hand curling into a fist atop the table. “Your mother would be ashamed of you, Brigid.”

“_Mother_?”

But Brigid choked, and the shame that had curdled in her lungs suddenly felt too big — too hot and too ugly. “Ashamed — of _me_? After everything I’ve done? All of the cooking and cleaning and — ”

Her scoff was unintended, her cheeks cold; Brigid felt vicious, as if she’d left her body and no longer had control of the words that spilled from her lips. She forced herself to stare through the bright window into the back garden; the sun almost blinded her, turning her vision golden and darkening the rest of the kitchen.

“How would I know what she’d think? I was a _child_ when she died.” As she paced to the stairs, the heat in Brigid’s chest exploded, rattling and shaking down her spine, trembling in her fingers. “I don’t know the first thing about what she’d think of me — ”

Gruff, her father grumbled, “She certainly never snuck out of her bedroom in the middle of the night — ”

“Well, I’m sorry that I’m not her!”

Whirling around, stumbling with the force of her anger, Brigid found her father pale under the layer of factory ash. His large hands clenched into fists, white-knuckled; he stared. Where Brigid felt frenetic, feverish, James Murphy sat, stoic, and watched as her chest heaved. The kitchen light shifted as a cloud moved in front of the morning sun — from gold to white to an odd, pale gray, the light leaked away.

“I’m sorry I’m such a terrible daughter — that I never learned how to behave.” Hot, furious tears stung at her eyes, and Brigid turned to climb the stairs before they could fall and embarrass her further. “I’m sorry that you’re so ashamed of me, Da!”

His sigh was heavy. “Brigid, don’t be ridiculous — ”

But reason had left her, and — well, Brigid might have been behaving like a child, but she was _sick_ of being treated like one. She kept climbing. “Soon, I’ll be married, and you won’t have to worry about me anymore!”

Below, underneath the stomping of her heels, something heavy and wooden clattered on the kitchen floor. “_Well, you’re not to see him after nightfall until that happens!_”

Though her lungs protested, Brigid didn’t respond, and she didn’t breathe until the bedroom door slammed behind her. Swiping at the tears that still clung to her bottom lashes, she leaned against the wood, stared at the bed. Exhaustion tugged at her eyes, but every part of her felt alive, electric, like the fire in her chest might grow and consume every bit of her.

She wanted her mother. A warm embrace, fingers in her hair, a murmured song in Irish — anything to calm her racing heart. Brigid thought of her mother’s journals, the ones her father had pulled from her aching hands and tucked away somewhere she didn’t know, and _wanted_.

But the cold practicality of day smothered the heat of her fury.

Methodical, Brigid replaced Ada’s beaded gown for a simple black skirt and lace blouse of her own; Ada’s silky shawl for her own hand-knitted cardigan; Ada’s heels for her own sturdy boots. She perched on the rickety old bench at her vanity and began to detangle her hair from the haphazard knot at the nape of her neck. With no time to wash and start the day fresh, she oiled her fingers and ran through her curls until they hung freely down her back in a heavy, shining sheet.

_Knock knock._

“Go away,” she called, voice deliberately firm and free of emotion as she focused on twisting her curls back into a neat chignon.

But when the person at her bedroom door spoke, low and muffled through the door, it wasn’t her father. _“Brigid? Could we talk?”_

She sighed to herself in the mirror, placed one last skinny pin into her chignon with delicate fingers. The late night weighed on her face; the tender skin under her eyes had turned a light violet, her cheeks gone wan. A maroon love bite along her collar, round like a wax seal pressed on her skin, peeked from underneath her blouse, and Brigid tugged the lace into place.

“Come in.”

Even to herself, she sounded defeated.

Jack shuffled into her bedroom on socked feet, and Brigid, briefly, wondered if her father had sent him. When he closed the door behind him with a quiet _snick_, she decided against it.

“How are you feeling?” The low tone was unfamiliar, given that Jack had always been the pleasant marriage of Joe’s loud intrepidity and Jim’s quiet steadfastness. “That was quite the row.”

Careful of the creaking floorboards, as if he knew they would give him away, Jack leaned back against the doorjamb.

Under his fraternal gaze, Brigid slumped, cradling her head in her hands, elbows braced on her knees. The sliver of defiance wound in her chest escaped with her sigh. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“That wasn’t half as bad as Julia at her worst — believe me.” Though the words teased, the cut of his mouth was almost grim. “Though, it was quite cruel of him to mention your mother.”

Uncomfortable, Brigid pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes until bright spots scattered behind her eyelids. She muttered, “Cruel is a word for it.”

Jack shifted — woolen trousers scratching, the floorboards gently creaking underneath him — and then said, “I wanted to thank you for not mentioning me. I _did_ try my best — said that you said last night you’d go to work early, but — ”

“But I gave a different lie,” Brigid finished. The smile that quirked on her lips was almost wry. “It’s all right.”

It was. She couldn’t be upset with him for her own foolishness, but — _curious_, Brigid thought. In the clear light of day, when the desire for Tommy didn’t thrum under her skin and drown out the noise, Brigid reflected that it was, indeed, _very_ kind of him to protect her secret for so little in return.

Across the bedroom, Jack ruffled the hair at the back of his head, eyes tracing the tired slump of her shoulders as if he were just noticing the fatigue on her face. His gaze curled in her chest, familiar.

“You don’t look happy, though, even to have spent a night with your lover.” Just as Patrick always had, Jack cut straight to his point. “Is everything all right — truly?”

Patrick had rarely let any true sympathies break through his bravado, but he’d looked at her with those same sad eyes when he found her weeping, that cool September evening, after Tommy told her he’d signed up to go off to war with the rest of them. _C’mon, Bridie,_ he’d said, his jovial tone almost forced. He’d slung a heavy arm over her shoulder, and Brigid had turned to cry into his woolen waistcoat. _You know I can keep Tom safe._

Brigid stood with a sigh as if to shake off Jack’s concern and the memory; the tired muscles in her legs ached, and she already dreaded her scheduled afternoon shift at Mrs. Thompson’s. Chewing on the inside of her cheek, she wrestled with his question, for so many things in her life were _truly_, at that moment, not all right.

_“Fine_ is probably a better word for it,” she said. “Tommy is — ”

But how to explain it?

She couldn’t tell Jack of the horse, of the talk of curses and bad seeds. Even if he could understand — and he would not — Belfast had its prejudices just as Birmingham did where Gypsies were concerned. She couldn’t tell him of the opium pipe that still weighed down her bag, for worse yet than marrying a Gypsy would be marrying a drugged-up Gypsy. She couldn’t tell him of Ada and her babe and Brigid’s desperate attempts to help them both, for worse _yet_ would be to associate with said drugged-up Gypsy’s knocked-up sister.

“Tommy’s had a hard time,” she finally said, delicate, quiet. Reaching for the small pearl-drop earrings that had once belonged to her mother, Brigid ducked to the mirror and slipped them into her ears. “Since the war, I mean. He doesn’t sleep well, and so, I don’t always sleep well when I stay with him. But I’m glad to be with him, regardless — and I think it helps him.”

Of the explanations she could have proffered, this one, above them all, felt like an invasion of privacy; it burned on her cheeks.

When she looked over to him, Jack scuffed his socked foot across the floor, cast his eyes down. He hadn’t served — none of the Doyle brothers had — and as she twisted Tommy’s ring around her finger, Brigid almost hated him.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” The cut of his mouth was thin. “I’m sure Uncle Jem doesn’t understand that. Have you tried — ”

“It’s no use.” Brigid smoothed her hands over the waistband of her skirt; the diamond of her ring caught in the seam, and she twisted it again so that the small stone faced outward. “He’s too old-fashioned. I’ll just have to be married.”

Outside, a breeze swept down the lane, rattling the windowpanes; Brigid’s lungs ached for the cool, damp air.

“I have to go.” She needed to see Ada — to deliver the case of clothes she’d carefully packed, to set her own eyes on Freddie Thorne and the ring he’d slipped on Ada’s finger. She needed to get out of this house, away from its grief and judgment. “I have to make a call before work.”

Jack nodded, straightened, and stepped from the doorjamb as if to let her pass, but Brigid’s feet might have been nailed to the floorboards. Her heart pounded. Below, her father would be —

“He went to bed.” Jack shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets, eyes cast down. “If it’s any consolation, after you left, he seemed sad, more than anything else.”

But Brigid was sad, too; she hid it with a scowl as she passed him by. “I’ll see you before nightfall.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jeez, will i ever actually post every other week like i say i will? hope the wait was worth it! would love to know what you're thinking :)
> 
> want to chat on [tumblr](https://aryaflint.tumblr.com/) instead?


	13. xiii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *cardi b voice* CORonaVIRus
> 
> sorry for falling off the face of the planet - call up your friends with depression, because this isolation thing is Rough™️. i hope everyone's staying safe and healthy and somehow managing to have a little fun too, since lord knows we need it <3
> 
> i plan to be back to our regularly scheduled programming now, lads.

Number Six was never so quiet as it was at seven in the morning, when the sun finally drowned the dregs of last night’s drink. No lamps had been lit in the parlor; no footsteps echoed from above — only the faint rumble of Arthur’s snoring.

Her cheeks still warm from a brisk walk, Brigid found the betting shop much as she had left it the evening prior: haphazard and cramped, littered with old betting slips and newspaper cuttings, rickety chairs and smudged ashtrays — and all covered in a thin layer of chalk dust.

But the tidying would have to wait, for the books called. With the last round of payroll now complete and John’s signature scrawled at the bottom of the ledger, it was Brigid’s turn to make sure everything balanced out —

If only she could get to the damn books.

“Bloody hell.” Again, though she knew it would be futile, Brigid jostled the old bronze knob.

It didn’t budge.

Frowning, she rested her forehead against the smudged glass of John’s office door. The accounts lay in a bed of crumpled papers and leaking fountain pens atop his desk, guarded by an empty whiskey glass.

This — the business — had been simpler during the war. When she left the books piled neatly at the head of her desk, they stayed there.

Brigid allowed herself only a moment to stew before she straightened her spine; lips pursed, she sunk her fingers into the knot of curls at the base of her neck. _Fuck it._ She wasn’t Patrick Murphy’s sister for nothing, and years of tripping, starry-eyed, after her brother had taught her more than she often cared to admit. When she pulled two long, skinny pins from her hair, the heavy, twisted chignon began to sag, but she didn’t worry. For bookmakers and thieves, the Peaky Blinders had shitty locks — her hairpins would be returned to their rightful place soon enough.

Chewing on her lip, she bent one into a lever and shoved it in the lock, jimmied the second in above it, and within moments, the tumblers gave way. Patrick had once lamented her small hands and the better control they afforded her with a lock pick. _Fucking unfair, is what it is._ Even now, years later, a warm pride bloomed in her chest.

Brigid emerged from John’s office with the heavy, leather-bound accounts collected in her arms, and the rising sun burned the front windows orange. She passed her tiny desk to commandeer the large scratched table; with it stretched out in front of her, she felt like a longboat captain — tall, powerful.

Payroll had passed in a haze of nines that looked like fours, sevens that looked like ones — John’s handwriting, in particular, was near-painful. She made it through the runners, the bookies, and the coppers with little trouble, if only because it never changed. The miscellaneous roll, as always, proved the problem — one-off payments and unauthorized bribes, nicknames and initials that could turn her head in circles for hours.

It was nearly eight before John blew through the heavy curtains that hid the shop from Number Six’s kitchen. Last night’s ale had inked violet circles under his eyes, but his collar was freshly pressed, his hair slicked back.

“Bridie!” He held his voice to a whisper — a faint acknowledgment of their secret rendezvous — but grinned at the sight of her. A warm hand cupped the nape of her neck as he dropped a kiss to her head. “Always on time, love.”

“And you’re always late.” Brigid rolled her eyes, leaning back from the books with a sigh. “Are the children here?”

A cloud of chalk dust stirred as he fell into the rickety old chair across from her, pausing for only a moment to consider the faint clatter of metal-on-metal in the kitchen. He pressed a finger to his lips as if to shush her, winking.

But when Brigid moved to stand on instinct, John snapped his fingers. “Oi, Alice is tall enough to reach the hob. They’ll be fine.”

“Fine.” Instead of matching his smile, Brigid shoved the heavy ledger across the table until he couldn’t ignore it any longer. “Then, you have some questions to answer.”

John slapped his pale cheeks to bring life to them and smirked when she broke into a peal of muffled laughter.“I do hate this part.”

“G.B. was paid — John, stop that,” Brigid ordered as he shook out his hands, rolled his head, cracked his fingers as if preparing for a brawl. “G.B. was paid three pounds, and then two more and ten bob the next week. What’s that for?”

With a sigh, he finally plucked the ink pen from between her fingers; as they agreed weeks prior, Brigid kept her handwriting out of the ledgers.

“I think Tom was paying someone off,” he muttered, ducking to the book to scrawl _Information_ under the appropriate column. “He’s getting worse about writing stuff down — spends too much time out.”

The humor slipped from Brigid’s face like snowmelt, hardened at the reminder of the long, lonely afternoons Tommy spent away from the shop. He’d once been a fixture — smoking over the paper in his office, laughing with Scudboat at the front desk, arguing about the day’s odds with John. These days, his office remained locked more often than not.

Instead of dwelling — the war had taken his good humor, and she’d resigned herself to that months prior — Brigid tapped a finger over the next offending line on the miscellaneous ledger. “J.M. has been getting five pounds a fortnight — that’s copper pay. Is he on the right roll?”

A long moment stretched between them, but John only squinted at the book; out of habit, he worked his lips as if a toothpick was perched between them. Quite often, informants who started as miscellaneous collaborators would need to be carried over to a different payroll once they made themselves more useful —

Brigid didn’t think anything of it until John frowned. “Don’t know.”

Pursing her lips, she said, “You’re the bookkeeper — that’s your job.”

“Bridie — ”

“It’s your handwriting, John.”

“Well, I’m not in charge around here, am I?”

Defensive, he tipped his chair until he balanced on only the two back legs, fingers laced behind his head. His wrinkled brow shadowed his Shelby blue eyes; the frown deepened the lines of his face. Not for the first time, Brigid thought he looked simultaneously too young and too old.

“I don’t ask questions — not much, anymore.” John slumped his shoulders with a sign. “Tom’s got all these plans and won’t say a bloody thing.”

Brigid’s brows jumped to nearly her hairline. “What do you mean _plans_, John?”

Her mind raced through enough options to fill a pantry cabinet — Billy Kimber and his band of legal thugs and Cheltenham; whatever had possessed him to run Freddie from the city; the war with the Lees; Campbell and this nonsense with the missing guns.

The clocked ticked closer to the opening hour; footsteps began to fall above their heads — but Brigid waited. Uncomfortable, John shrugged, plucked a toothpick from the inner pocket of his suit, much how Tommy might scramble for a cigarette, and perched it between his lips.

His reticence slipped down Brigid’s neck and settled between her shoulders, and then she was leaning forward over the table to lower her voice. “So, it’s Tommy who’s brought on J.M.? Since when do we hire without family interviews?”

And John’s eyes fell to — _interesting._ A flush crawled up to Brigid’s ears.

Clearing his throat, John averted his gaze. “You know how he is.”

Brigid had always dressed rather modestly. Her poor family could never afford the newest fabrics and cuts; her poor mother could never afford to let her only daughter prance around town looking like a trollop. _If I can’t keep you from getting into trouble,_ she’d once said, voice firm, as she ripped a coarse brush through Brigid’s tangled hair, _then you’ll at least look proper while you do it._

She’d held onto her corset for much longer than other women her age, and she still preferred long walking skirts to the shorter hems the dress shop could hardly keep in stock. But she _had _welcomed the latest floppy lace collars, and the high, bright morning sun had called for her most-forgiving spring blouse.

Propping an elbow on the table, Brigid twisted a curl around her finger — contemplative, careful —

And if she, intentionally, leaned a little further over the table, only she would know it.

“He doesn’t tell me anything, John,” she whispered, meeting his eyes before they flicked to the curl still twisted around her finger, “and I worry about all of you. Please, tell me what he’s been — ”

But a ruckus from the kitchen broke through the heavy, velvet curtains, and their moment of privacy cracked open like an egg.

Brigid straightened, tucked the loose curl behind her ear — she could have picked Tommy’s sure, even footsteps out of a riot, as familiar as she was. But when she turned, propping an elbow over the back of her chair to set eyes on him, she didn’t feel ashamed.

“Good morning.” Her voice came out soft, almost a whisper.

Dressed in a dark suit — all sharp, tightly tailored lines against the starched white of his collar — Tommy’s glacial eyes flicked between the both of them before landing on his brother, still hunched over the table with red cheeks. The moment stretched, silent; he dug a hand into his suit jacket for a cigarette.

“You are lucky Alice hasn’t spilled boiling water on the baby,” he finally said around a cigarette.

This time, Brigid did flush. “Christ,” she muttered, hoisting her skirt up in a fist as she stood, “let me — ”

Tommy pointed his fresh cigarette at her, an order already parting his lips. “Stay.” And then, to John — “Take care of your own kids, John.”

A flush bloomed John’s cheeks as he shoved back from the table, working the toothpick between his lips. “Right.”

And whereas he might have normally clapped a hand on his brother’s shoulder, John was careful to duck past Tommy, eyes averted, as he passed. Tommy, for his part, didn’t attempt to meet John’s gaze; instead, he waited until John had jerked the curtains closed behind him with a _snap_ to draw closer.

“What are you two up to, then?”

Though the question itself was pointed, Tommy’s shoulders relaxed as he drew closer. His cigarette flared, his exhale heady with tobacco; the soft look in his eyes pulled Brigid up onto her feet with a warm smile. _Fuck Tommy,_ John had said._ He doesn’t have to know._

If he could keep secrets about the accounts, so could she.

And so instead of responding, Brigid plucked the cigarette from between his lips to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth where his lips pinched. They curved into a smile under hers, but then —

With one hand, he snatched back the cigarette; the other found the dip of her waist, a thumb tracing a gentle line along the band of her skirt. Never one to let his questions go unanswered, he added, “It’s early.”

“It’s half-eight, Tom.” Brigid kept her voice steady, lips brushing his as she spoke; she rolled her eyes for good measure.

“Like I said — ” he said, his thumb dipping into the pleat of her waistband, “early.”

Brigid jerked her chin to the abandoned tea towel at the edge of the desk, for once thankful that Polly had only half-tidied the shop before retiring for the evening. “You men are too messy. _I_ came in to clean up this pigsty before we open to the public.”

“Perhaps you should have stayed late instead.” The hint of a smile deepened the gaunt lines of his face, like he knew the game they were playing — he probably did. “You could have gotten more sleep.”

Only minutes prior, John’s reminder of Tommy’s secrecy had been all it took to turn her sour; now, a smile on his solemn face made her stomach flutter. Sandwiched between him and the table, she wanted to kiss him again — the last time she’d found herself in that position, they’d shared only hot tears and kisses, not smiles.

Brigid smoothed a hand down his lapel, her fingers coming to rest at his navel. “Well, I’ve been banned from seeing you past nightfall, so I don’t want to take any chances.”

“Banned?” He quirked a brow as if unimpressed.

“Da was none too pleased about my late return Saturday morning,” she explained, dreadfully aware of the thumb he trailed under her ribcage. “Says I’m housebound except for work until you marry me.”

“And you intend to listen? Not your style, Murphy.”

_Murphy_. Years had passed since she heard the name drop from his lips so cavalier, and always, always directed at Patrick. It slipped into the cracks of her heart and ached there, so sorely that all she could do was lift herself onto her toes, rest her forehead against his.

“I intend to keep him happy,” she murmured, eyes falling shut, “until you marry me.”

And though he had just lit the cigarette, Tommy reached around her to drop it in a full ashtray atop the table; his warm fingers settled in the slope of her neck, his lips quirking against hers. “Does that mean you won’t be stealing into my bed like a wanton lover?”

“_Not_,” she said firmly, ignoring the flush that crept up her neck and cheeks like an itch she couldn’t scratch, “if you keep being rude.”

When she opened her eyes, Brigid found him smirking, but he refused to let her pout. The hand at her neck drew her closer until her nose was pressed into the dip of his temple and his hot breath was in her hair. In the warm, burnt-orange morning light that streamed in through the front shop windows, he looked golden, lovely beyond compare. He’d been so affectionate, almost uncharacteristically so, since that rainy night that found her in his bed and blood on his hands.

Brigid’s heart hammered, and she decided she could live in that silence.

Tommy’s chilled hand brushed along the soft cut of her jaw to find her hair. Even though they were alone, Brigid’s cheeks burned at the touch, at the gesture they reserved for the privacy of his bedroom. At least until he pulled away to proffer an out-of-shape hairpin, bent into a lever, in his open palm.

“What locks have you been picking, eh?” The jest in his tone was enough to fracture the calm; mouth twisting, Brigid snatched the pin back, and he laughed. “That’s my job.”

“I forgot my key this morning — didn’t want to make a second trip.”

As she worked the pin back into its proper position in her chignon with antsy fingers, Tommy quirked a brow. “You broke into the house?”

“I broke into the shop,” Brigid lied, a hot flush climbing up her cheeks. “You have shitty locks.”

Tommy tucked a loose curl behind her ear before letting his warm fingers trail down the slope of her neck; if he sensed that she wasn’t being truthful, he didn’t give it away.

“The locks are solid.” Something terribly fond softened in his eyes. “Your brother was just too damn good — ”

“Bridie!”

Together, they startled — Tommy forced her behind him, and Brigid fisting her hands into the wool of his suit jacket — only to find James stomping through the curtains. Already taller than his elder sister and even more freckled, the six-year-old might have been born the miniature of his father, but with every day that passed, he looked more like Martha.

“Alice won’t cook breakfast.” James crossed his arms, full bottom lip stuck out in a pout. “She only keeps reading my bloody tea leaves — ”

“_Oi!_ First of all, you don’t get to say ‘bloody,’ James Shelby.” Biting back a smile, Brigid loosened her grip on Tommy’s suit and slipped out from behind him with a sigh. “Second, you know how to fry up bacon and potatoes yourself.”

“But, I — ”

“Nope, no excuses from you.” Tommy’s hand settled on her lower back; the low rumble of his laughter vibrated in his fingertips, and gooseflesh prickled on her arms as she shooed her godson from the shop. “You’ll help me, and Alice will keep reading leaves. Go on.”

Brigid waited until the heavy curtains fell closed behind him before turning back to Tommy. Even as she’d scolded James, his sharp eyes hadn’t strayed from her; now, when she reached up to run a thumb across the cut of his jaw, they fluttered.

“I love you,” she murmured, hating how it still, after all these years, could come out as a question.

Her green eyes met his blue, and Brigid — she remembered the ghost of his fingernails digging into her bare waist, the hard plains of his chest against her, his fingers slipping down her calves with her knit stockings bunched underneath them. It had been months since they reunited one the train station, weeks of hesitant touches and careful words. When he finally kissed her in the smoke and haze of Charlie’s yard, when he admitted he was no good for her and she admitted that she didn’t care, he had promised to try.

She supposed this was what trying looked like.

When her thumb reached nearly his chin, he tipped it up, pressing a kiss to the pad of her thumb. “I love you, too.”

And Brigid decided she could worry about the business — the secret payments, the secret plans — later.

* * *

The damp heat of spring had melted into the crowded pub, and the Garrison thrummed like a heartbeat — warm, lively, sticky. With Grace behind the bar, only Brigid was left at the back of the pub, plunking out melody after melody on the old upright for those in the crowd still in the mood to sing.

At least until the pub’s doors burst open. A pair of stooped men stepped through, and gunmetal glinted in their hands.

Brigid froze.

Between them emerged another man — taller, well-tailored, with a severe haircut to match the thin line of his mustache. A tide of whispers swelled; boots shuffled and heads ducked, leaving her with a clear view of the doorway. He gaped, his beady eyes dragging over the dusty, sweaty crowd until Brigid felt them land on her.

He shouted, “Is there any man here named Shelby?”

A wooden bench creaked; to Brigid’s right, old Mr. Auld muffled a cough.

The man gave them only a moment to reply before reaching into his pin-striped suit, raising his hand, and —

_Bang!_

Brigid ducked, elbows clanking on the ivory keys, head tucked between them — the discordant notes rattled her teeth, the startled screams of the pub’s parts ringing in her ears. Plaster cracked, whispered, dusted the man’s dark linen suit. The Garrison’s old ceiling was marred where his gunshot had gone clean through.

“I _said_, is there any man here named Shelby?”

Cigarette smoke and fear thickened the air, but no one spoke. Grace’s golden hair glinted in the doorway to the back room where she had only just returned from hauling rubbish to the alley; Harry froze behind the bar, still tall over the crouched heads of his patrons.

But in the snug, feet hit the floor, and shadows shifted. And then, three men named Shelby emerged.

Tommy led them, flanked by a black-capped John and mussed Arthur, Scudboat and Lovelock bringing up the rear. Whiskey and the evening warmth flushed his cheeks, but he observed the still pub — the glinting guns, the plaster dust and peanut shells and factory soot at their feet, the wide-eyed patrons — with a cool eye. As he traced the room, his eyes met Brigid’s. Her heart jumped to somewhere in her throat.

“Harry, get these men a drink.” Those icy eyes continued their path as he pointed to the barman; with an irreverent twist of his had to the pub at large, he added, “Everyone else — go home!”

The pub burst to life once more. Chairs scraped; a low cloud of dust stirred as the assembled men and women scattered like mice under a torch. Brigid’s hands trembled as she clamored to her feet, careful to pull the lid down and over the ivory keys. But in her mind, the pieces were falling into place. The goons and their guns, the rich tailoring of his suit, the rounded vowels —

_Billy Kimber_ in Small Heath. Perhaps they hadn’t been as smooth with Monaghan Boy as they thought.

As the patrons shouldered by the men in the doorway, Kimber swore, the disdain clear on his face. “I don’t want your swill — barmaid!”

And he snapped at Brigid. She’d been the last of them, after all, sat at the back of the pub with the upright.

“Gin,” he ordered, the words thick, demanding, through the ugly turn of his mouth.

Over his shoulder, the last of the pub’s patrons darted through the door. Only the Shelbys and Harry, a burnished tray of crystal tumblers and a bottle of whiskey rattling in his nervous hands, were left.

The brief moment fell like a stone between them — Tommy’s eyes flicked once to Brigid before returning to Kimber — and then it was John who marched forward. Gnawing on the toothpick between his teeth, he gritted out, “She’s not a barmaid.”

Tommy caught his brother by the shoulder with a placating hand, the line of his mouth firm. “John — ”

“Oh, she’s not a barmaid?” Billy Kimber was a man not acquainted with being challenged — he flushed puce, his beady eyes bugging at John. “Well, I’m Billy fuckin’ Kimber, so she’s a barmaid if I say she’s a barmaid!”

Her cheeks burning, Brigid met Harry’s gaze as he stepped past her, as he gave her the subtlest of nods. The gunshot still sang in her trembling fingertips, and she sucked a breath deep into her belly, hoping to settle them before she poured Billy Kimber’s gin.

As Brigid let herself through the bar’s swing gate, the men settled behind her — pulling back chairs, sliding crystal tumblers across the table. She had to lift herself onto her tiptoes to reach the top-shelf gin, and, in the back of her mind, she wondered if that was the reason why Grace always wore heels behind the bar. Practiced hands readied the clear bottle — uncorking it, letting the liquor breathe.

Kimber pushed an empty glass to the edge of the table as she approached, but Brigid focused on Tommy. He had settled back from the table with his legs crossed, almost relaxed, and leveled her with a firm stare. She knew he couldn’t acknowledge her — or any weakness at all — but his presence nonetheless loosened the vise grip around her throat.

Brigid pursed her lips, tried to make herself small. Gin sloshed in the tumbler.

“Thanks, doll,” he drawled, and then, Billy Kimber’s hand settled over the curve of her arse.

_Clink_ — Brigid jerked upright, the bottle knocking the glass, and forced herself not to speak, even as her lungs rattled and her tongue curled around a curse. Kimber squeezed — rubbed —

“Get your hands off her.”

John’s growl rumbled up from his broad chest like the thunder in a storm cloud, and Kimber’s wide mouth once again dropped open as he took in John’s red cheeks. “Not a barmaid — she’s your whore, then?”

Where John had, only moments prior, been slouched in his chair, he jerked his cap from his head as he straightened. The razors glinted —

“John.” Tommy’s repeated warning brooked no further explanation; he didn’t meet his brother’s incredulous stare.

Instead, his eyes met Brigid’s from across the table. The moment froze, and the ugly shiver on her skin faded away; under Tommy’s gaze, tears burned at her eyes anyway.

His voice was steady, the words nearly a whisper — almost too gentle for a man’s conversation. “Go home.”

Brigid nodded, vision blurry, and topped off Kimber’s tumbler — he’d already tossed back a finger’s worth of the Garrison’s finest gin, laughing through it as John flushed and leaned back in his creaking pub chair. It took her three attempts to finally cork the bottle through the tears that clung to her lower lashes. The bottle she deposited at the center of the table with the Irish, which forced her to lean briefly closer. Kimber’s breath washed over her arm; his eyes trailed from her hot cheeks to the curve of her bust.

And Brigid had, as inexplicable as it was, never felt smaller, even under the judgmental glare of Inspector Campbell. At least he, in his own way, addressed her as if she were worthy of it.

“Never approved of women in pubs, myself,” he said, turning to watch as Brigid backed away, “but when they look like that — ”

“Mr. Kimber, you asked for men called Shelby.” Voice gruff, Tommy propped a cigarette between his lips, punctuating his words with the strike of a match. After a long drag, he continued, “Perhaps, if you’re done feeling up their women, you could tell them why you’re here.”

Brigid paused for only a moment at the coatrack, tugging loose curls from the collar of her coat, slipping her hat over her curls and her bag over her shoulder, before scurrying through the first set of double doors.

“_I’d never heard of you._” Kimber sounded agitated, slamming his gin to the table. “_Then, I did hear of you — _”

The second set of double doors burned orange with factory flame, and Brigid ducked through them again to suck heady, humid air into her lungs. Kimber’s car shone, black as the brick around her; it stuck out like gold amongst coal, and Brigid stared at her reflection in the window. As the taste of bile disappeared from her throat and her heart dropped back into her chest, she made a decision.

Instead of turning down Garrison Court, she ducked into the skinny, stinking alleyway between the pub and the factory, the same one where John had cornered her all those weeks ago, empty of all but rotting rubbish and glittering broken glass.

Brigid had always been, perhaps to her detriment, quite talented at not following orders — it was how she found herself in the Garrison that evening not a half-hour after her father left for the factory, after all. Carefully, she stepped over an oily puddle and huddled close to the pub’s wall beyond the stretch of light that shone through the Garrison’s front windows. She waited.

Time dripped by like molasses until finally, Kimber stalked from the Garrison. Doors slammed, the automobile growled to life, and then, Kimber and his men disappeared down the length of Garrison Court. Brigid twirled a loose curl around her finger, eyes trained on the pub doors — first Arthur and Scudboat stumbled out, and with the next swing of the doors, John followed. Lovelock shadowed him for a block before turning onto an adjacent street. The lights in the pub snuffed; window shutters creaked, rattling the glass.

Shifting, Brigid glanced down the alley for a glinting pair of eyes — had he snuck out the back?

The Garrison’s front doors slammed shut, and —

_There._

A cloud of smoke followed Tommy out of the pub down the well-worn track to Watery Lane, and Brigid darted from the alley on light feet to follow. He kept his head down, shoulders slumped as if to avoid attention, but she followed the flare of his cigarette until she was close enough to curl a hand around the curve of his elbow.

“_Tommy_,” she whispered, nearly a hiss, and —

He jerked, a hand digging under his coat as if to reach for his gun, before the tension left him in a single, frustrated sigh. “Damnit, Brigid, I told you to go home.”

“Did you expect I would listen?” The evening’s anxiety shuddered in her lungs, in the breathy laugh that escaped.

For the briefest second, Brigid feared he was truly angry — he wrenched his hand from his coat, his elbow from her grip. But then, instead of continuing on his path, he plucked the cigarette from his lips with one hand, wrapped the other arm over her shoulders. The weight of him settled around her like a familiar coat, like a hand-sewn quilt; he tugged her close enough to nose along her hairline.

His cigarette hissed, thrown to a dirty puddle at their feet, and Brigid smiled as his stubble caught in her hair.

Regret weighed down his sigh. “I could have killed him.”

Brigid fought the memory of Kimber’s touch; instead, she slipped her hands under his coat to wrap around his waist. They’d come to a stop in the middle of a long block, the nearest streetlamp but a wink, and Tommy hugged her so tightly that the buttons of his vest dug into her cheekbone.

“It’s all right.” She planted her chin under his gaunt collarbone, meeting his eyes. “He’s horrible — so many men are. Women get used to it.”

Tommy’s knuckles trailed down her temple, her cheek, across the cut of her jaw. She thought he might kiss her, but he only tucked his face into her hair again. “If you’d stay at home like Da wants, you wouldn’t have to.”

“I’d be a naive fool, too,” Brigid whispered, smiling. “And then, where would you be?”

Tommy laughed, truly, his full lips curling up along her hairline, and they stayed like that — cocooned, two hearts beating together — for a long moment before he nudged her along. Heels clicking on the cobblestones, Brigid tugged him close, fitting herself underneath his arm.

The razors in his cap glinted, catching her eye as they passed under the streetlamp, and Brigid finally asked, “What did he want, then? Was it Monaghan Boy?”

They had never formally spoken of the magic horse and the three thousand pounds the shop brought in the night he finally lost — by that point, she’d been told to stay out of the books, and he’d locked up the part of him that shared information and thrown the key into the Cut. But men, and particularly Arthur, talked.

Tommy’s eyes didn’t meet hers, even as she dug her fingers into the curve of his waist. “Yes. He had questions about Kempton.”

“And?”

“Well,” he said, a wry smile curling around a fresh cigarette, “he didn’t have us shot against a post.”

“Don’t jape about that.” He parted his lips as if to retort, but Brigid furrowed her brow — she wasn’t done. “How did you sweet-talk your way out of that, Tommy Shelby? What deal did you make?”

If he meant to remind her of _their_ deal, the one she’d agreed to with the shards of her mother’s porcelain cutting into her knees — _I want you to stay as far away from this mess as you can. Can you do that for me?_ — he held back. Instead, Tommy took a long drag of his cigarette, the small ember flaring in the pitch-dark night.

“Well.” He paused, considering the syllables as a heady cloud of smoke spilled over his lips. “We spoke about Cheltenham. About the Lees.”

Frowning, Brigid stared up at him and the shadows in his gaunt cheekbones, but he didn’t meet her gaze. “The Lees?”

“They’re lifting money off his bookies. His security isn’t up to scratch — I expect they’re getting their cut.” Business-like, firm — his steady heels punctuated the words. Tommy urged her forward, even as Brigid attempted to slow them down. “In any case, I’d say he’s losing around fifteen percent at each race.”

“So?”

Brigid cared little for the intricacies of Billy Kimber’s business — she wanted to know what business _Tommy_ had in challenging the largest racetrack king outside of London.

“I proposed that we serve as his security instead — work together to protect his licenses and cuts.”

Perhaps she had, over the years, become desensitized to the boldness of Tommy Shelby, because Brigid’s breath caught in her throat. It was in moments like that — in the middle a dark, cobblestoned lane, in his sharply-tailored coat with that glint in his eye — that she was reminded of why so many in Small Heath admired him, and —

And why they feared him, too.

“And in return?” she asked, for Tommy did very little without the promise of something on the other end. Even when they’d been younger, she’d had to trade kisses for dancing, sweet words for his indulgence.

His sure footsteps clicked on the cobblestones in time with Brigid’s heart, in time with the distant factory clamor. Tommy’s pale eyes reflected the candlelight of a passing window before they were lost behind a cloud of thick tobacco smoke; his arm around her shoulders tightened.

“And in return,” he began, his voice almost lost under the general din of Small Heath, “a license of our own — I hope.”

“Christ, Tommy.” Something like wonder curled in Brigid’s chest, and —

— and she hardly wanted to think it, let alone speak it aloud, but she knew what might come next: a second license might follow the first, and then a third, and then, if they were lucky, perhaps a whole racetrack pitch to the Peaky Blinders. A _legal_ license. A _legal_ track pitch. _After all the planning and thinking has passed, and I’ve a got a legal betting license in my name, _he’d said — that late night after the British Army finally spat him back out on English soil, when she’d pulled him to a stop outside her mother’s church and he’d placed a kiss to the thin platinum ring on her fourth finger — _we’ll talk about this_.

“And what did he say?”

It had been some time since Brigid allowed herself to hope.

Smoke curled from his lips on a sigh. “Well, his accountant agreed to a second meeting — at Cheltenham.”

Something electric crawled up Brigid’s throat, curled on her lips; almost tumbling on a slick cobblestone, she finally succeeded in pulling him to a stop. “So, we _are_ going to Cheltenham?”

“I am going to Cheltenham, yes.”

Brigid’s smile hardened, falling like a stone into the pit of her stomach. For all that he tried to keep his motivations secret, Tommy always seemed to forget how well she could read him — that she had witnessed him do the very same thing to his brothers, to his aunt.

In hope’s place rose fear of whispered conversations and secret accounts, of golden hair and scarlet damask. “But not me?”

She hoped the waver in her voice was detectable to her own ears only, but when his gaze flashed to her, she knew he’d heard. A gloved hand rose to scrub over his eyes, hiding them from her. “We agreed it would be best for you to stay out of the business, Brigid.”

A scowl rose to her face, and the dark, vicious part of her heart where she’d locked up Patrick’s temper wished he could see it.

She had agreed, but he — Tommy had ordered.

“Out of the — ” Brigid choked herself off, dropped her voice, swallowed the hot tide that rose in her throat. “Out of this nonsense with _Campbell_, but not — you _told_ me to stay out of the books. This is different — ”

“Brigid — ”

She plowed through, even as the judgment in his placid gaze crawled up the back of her neck like a fever. “You said Kimber has an accountant. Well, I’m the best with the accounts, Tommy, and you know it. I could talk to him.”

But Tommy had begun to shake his head before she finished, taking a final drag from the burning stub of his cigarette. “No. You’ll not come — it’s too dangerous.”

“Too _dangerous_?”

Scoffing, Brigid tugged away from him and sucked the night’s damp air into her hot lungs. But whereas her emotions felt too large for the space between them — indignation licking at her heels like flames, embarrassment undulating like waves — Tommy’s straightened him out, gripped around his spine and squeezed. His cigarette hit the cobblestones with a _hiss_ before he squashed it under his boot heel.

“But not too dangerous for you?” Brigid’s heart felt black, ugly.

And the muscle in his jaw jumped. He was angry with her, too.

“We’ll go to Cheltenham prepared — I have a plan.” Tommy’s voice was steady, round vowels and lazy consonants strung together with a neat frown. Sergeant Major Shelby stared across the hollow between them — he’d always been better at restraining himself than she had, even before they’d sent him to die in France. “We’ll distract Kimber while we — ”

“Who, Tommy? Who’s ‘we’?”

He rolled his eyes to the dark sky, the moon lost behind heavy clouds. “The Blinders. Don’t be difficult.”

“And who’s going to distract Kimber, then?” she spat, because she was only beginning to tip into the realm of difficulty. “Whose arse is he grabbing — Arthur’s?”

“Brigid — ”

But she’d started, and she’d never been good at stopping. “Is it Grace? You know, she’s been bragging all over town about a date to the races.”

With a single shake of his head, he said, “I never called it a date.”

“So it _is_ her!”

The gasp that ripped from her lips was nearly a hiss; Brigid shoved her fist into his chest — not a punch, not quite, but he still caught her hand between his much larger fingers. His blue eyes flashed to her, pale in the night, and his nostrils flared; the other hand rose to shake a finger in her face.

“I’m fucking paying her, Brigid,” he growled through gritted teeth, “so don’t run off thinking — ”

“Why not me, then?” She’d almost thought to be wrong — she _wished_ she’d been wrong. “You wouldn’t have to pay me — or do you prefer it that way?”

Had he been a worse man, he might have hit her.

But Tommy, as he was wont to do, clenched his jaw, released the hold on her fist, stepped away, the cut of his shoulders hard in the mist. Something like shame coiled around her lungs until she felt she could hardly breathe, but the words had been said. Stood in the middle of the lane, she watched as his head dipped, as his pale fingers dug inside his coat for another cigarette.

Shaking his head, Tommy struck a match; his slim, hunched shoulders hid the flame from her. “How many times do I have to tell you that I want to keep you safe?”

“Tommy, you’re treating me like a child.” Brigid sighed, twisting his ring around her finger. Tentatively, she reached out, scratching against the wool of his coat as she slipped her hand around his elbow. “And I’m _not_.”

Something sour twisted in her chest, locked in her heart in a vise grip — treated like a child, even as she took care of his family and took him to bed.

Tommy pulled from her grip as he turned, but in the dark street, he leaned even closer to hiss, “I’m treating you like a _wife_. Isn’t that what you want?”

As if she’d been slapped, Brigid reared back, agape; her heart pounded in her chest and her ears and the fingertips she jabbed into his chest. “You _know_ that’s not what I mean.”

“No?” He raised a fist — and Brigid had never feared him, had never thought he would hit her, but she flinched, anyway — to nudge her chin as he might with Finn when the boy got too big for his trousers. “Well, fucking enlighten me.”

Pale in the dark street, he looked like a ghost, like some kind of vengeful spirit unleashed on Small Heath — and perhaps he always had been. Brigid jerked from his touch. Her lungs felt too big for her chest, but too small for the breath she tried to draw in; instead, she focused on the distant streetlamp, a winking orange light in the black.

“I want to be fucking _useful_, Tommy!” The syllables tripped over each other, vicious. “I’m _sick_ of just sitting around like — I’m better than this.”

His sigh was harsh, as was the hand he scraped over his face. “I’m doing this for your own good, and if you can’t see — ”

“I’m better than just cleaning up after supper and putting the children to bed and smiling pretty and you _know _it,” she nearly screamed, for if she was the fire that burned and burned until she burnt out, he was the petrol that kept her going.

“You _don’t_ know when to keep your mouth shut — ”

“I _am_ the best with the books. Who else is gonna — ”

“ — and you definitely can’t keep your head long enough to get through negotiations at Cheltenham!”

Brigid finally shut her mouth. The frustration clawed at her lips, words begging to tumble out, but as she watched Tommy heave, twisted and sour, she swallowed them. An unbearable heat had crawled up her neck as if to choke her, and she clawed at her coat, shaking out of it with trembling fingers for a sense of relief.

“Fine.” Brigid spun on a single heel, her cheeks burning. “I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

Behind her, Tommy sighed — a ragged, breathless thing. She imagined he was scrubbing a hand over this face, his eyes screwed shut. “Brigid, come back here.”

“No!” Her heart ached, fierce, even as her chin wobbled. “It’s fine.”

The moon finally won its battle with the clouds, lighting a path along the cobblestones back to Watery Lane — or she could turn right, two blocks down, and return to her own home. As tears blurred her vision, neither option welcomed her.

But her feet decided before her head did, and then Brigid was striding away. “I want to go home.”

The home for which her income helped pay; the home she had tidied and minded and loved — would it ever treat her like a woman either?

Tommy’s voice was quiet, almost lost on a breeze that swept through and cooled Brigid’s hot cheeks. “Let me walk you.”

But his heels didn’t click on the cobblestones behind her, and Brigid, vicious, found she was glad. The stiff cotton of her dress scratched at her sensitive skin; his ring weighed down her hand.

She chewed on the inside of her cheek, and the cool platinum bit her skin as she swiped away the tears. “I can take care of myself, Tommy.”

Somewhere in the depths of her bag was the switchblade he’d given her — all those years ago before he went off the war and everything tipped upside down and ugly.

She _could_ take care of herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've never been one to beg, but it would be so lovely if you could give me your thoughts on the chapter, or just say hi! this chapter's been the only thing keeping me company and i'm sick of looking at it lol
> 
> if you want to pm me, feel free to come over to [tumblr](https://aryaflint.tumblr.com/)!


	14. xiv.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i meant to post this yesterday but i took a three hour nap instead - happy quarantine?
> 
> (real talk, hope y'all are safe and healthy)

“Here, love,” Brigid muttered around the needle perched between her lips. “Should be perfect, now.”

For lack of a pincushion, she stuck her needle in a nearby fringed pillow and dropped the small pair of burnished mending scissors atop Freddie’s old side table. Ada’s chosen wedding dress was a frothy number of satin and tulle, a long-forgotten church dress that she had, by her admission, worn only once some four years prior — and seventeen-year-old Ada had not had a growing belly to hide.

Perched at a slim vanity on a rickety stool with only one cheek rouged, Ada looked almost comical, but her grin was true. “Oh, Bridie, you’re my savior.”

“Come here.” Her wristwatch indicated they had an hour to get to the chapel. “There’s hardly time to fix much else if this doesn’t do it.”

Brigid shook out the ivory gown, sighing against the tailored bodice of her own spring dress as she stood. Carefully, they worked together to maneuver Ada and her belly into the dress; she held her breath as she worked up the long line of pearl buttons at the girl’s back.

With the last button, Brigid tapped on Ada’s shoulder. “Turn around.”

She observed her with a tailor’s eye — the tulle that flourished about her knees; the deep, beaded neckline that still lay flat; and, most importantly, the folds of satin that covered both Ada’s belly and Brigid’s hasty seams.

“Perfect,” she said, heart jumping to her tight throat. Her eyes finally met Ada’s shining face and one pink cheek. “Lovely — ”

But Ada launched herself forward, startling a gasp from Brigid’s lips. With her skinny arms latched around Brigid’s neck, she breathed, “Oh, Bridie! I feel like a princess — thank you, _thank you_!”

“Yes, yes, all right.” Brigid pursed her lips against a smile and smoothed a hand down the back of Ada’s bodice, careful not to crease the satin as she hugged her back. “Be careful, now.”

Ada thrummed like a hummingbird, small and warm and shining with excitement; when she pulled back, as quickly as she had jumped forward, a breathless grin split her face. Her hands trailed from Brigid’s shoulders down to her hands, twining their fingers together.

“I didn’t let myself think about it before Freddie came back, but…” Round cheeks shining, Ada pulled one of Brigid’s hands to her belly, where their fingers spread over the satin — and underneath, a firm swell. “You’ll be the godmother, won’t you? Please?”

Ada’s heartbeat was in her fingertips, but where Brigid’s should have been, there was an ache, something gaping open and dark. Her eyes strayed to the suitcase on the floor, overflowing with silks and satins, rogues and lipsticks; the tiny window and weak thread of sunlight that spilled in; the glinting needle that still stood upright in the fringed pillow.

“I don’t — ” She wanted to speak, to _explain_, but her tongue was heavy.

“Oh, Bridie, but you must!” Ada, bouncing on stockinged feet, leaned down until they were nose-to-button nose, her Shelby blue eyes shining. “Freddie doesn’t have any family left, and… I wouldn’t have made it this far without you. You’re the reason I still _have_ my baby!”

Brigid’s eyes burned, but she was nodding before she could stop herself. “I — yes. Of course.”

What else could she say?

Ada squealed, that grin stretching wider across her face, and they were hugging again. Brigid tucked her nose into the taller girl’s neck, hot in her soft cotton dress; almost frantic, her heart fluttered in her ribcage like a trapped bird.

She seemed to collect godchildren like others did stamps or silver spoons or hats. Alice had been promised to Arthur and Martha’s only sister, but then, less than a year later, the twins had gone to her and Tommy. Martha, on the birthing bed that had become her deathbed, had begged Brigid to take Little John as well. _Please, Bridie,_ she’d whispered, her eyes shining with vigor instead of sickness. New babe held to her chest, nursing even though she had so little milk to give, Martha had said, _I don’t know if John’ll make it back, and — you know my mother won’t take him. Tillie’s got her own, now, too. I want him to be with _you_, Brigid, always, even when I — _

Ada’s kiss _smack_ed on Brigid’s cheek, and she spoke through a happy giggle. “You are a _gem,_ Brigid Murphy!”

And so Brigid forced a laugh, cupping a hand around the back of Ada’s head and carefully curled hair — this would be a happy day, and damn the rest.

“I do try.” When Ada’s pink cheeks scrunched in a laugh, she continued, “Now, finish your face, and _don’t_ get powder on that dress.”

With a bright smile, Ada returned to her tiny vanity, its worktop the only burst of color in the otherwise dull, dim flat, and Brigid —

Brigid said a silent prayer that when the rose-colored glasses fell away, the girl could still find happiness in Freddie’s decidedly beige life.

_Rap rap rap._

Through the flat’s chipped door, Freddie’s voice was warbled. “_Ada? Can I come in?_”

“No!”

Brigid spun to the door before Ada could interject; the sticky latch had swelled in the midday heat, forcing Brigid to shoulder it open. On the other side, she found Freddie Thorne dressed in his finest suit, his eyes bright and shining under the flat brim of his hat.

“Freddie Thorne, you know better.” When his eyes darted over her head, Brigid raised herself onto her toes to block the view of his soon-to-be bride, almost laughing. “We will _meet _you at the church!”

He retrieved the hat from his head, revealing the thin, careful part of his hair, his lips twisting into a smile. Once, she’d thought that same smirk was an attempt to charm her; it had certainly brought a hot flush to her cheeks when she’d been sixteen and foolish. But she, now, knew it was just how he approached life — brash, bold, perhaps a little bit in love.

“It’s a shame Paddy isn’t here to see this,” he finally said.

Brigid quirked a brow, unimpressed. “To see you get married?”

Somehow, she doubted her headstrong brother, who had lacked a hint of sentimentality in even a single bone of his body, would care that Freddie Thorne was getting hitched — though he might have appreciated the drama of Ada Shelby being the bride.

“No, to see you pissing off Tommy,” Freddie retorted, leaning against the doorjamb and staring down his long nose at her. “That was his favorite sport in France.”

A flush crept up Brigid’s neck, but she couldn’t fight the smile that stretched across her face. “It was here in England, too.”

“D’you know he could disassemble and reassemble his rifle near twenty seconds faster than Tom? He loved that.” Freddie’s smirk softened into a more familiar crooked smile; his eyes left her to trail down the line of her nose. “Christ, you look like him.”

And Brigid and Patrick had never looked terribly alike growing up — he was all sharp angles and fine bone, whereas she was full of soft curves and rounded edges — but Brigid could have stood there all day trying to pry out whatever it was in the lines of her face that reminded Freddie of her dear, dead brother.

“This is not a day for reminiscing, Freddie Thorne,” she said, more to herself than him. Sucking a deep breath into her belly, Brigid ignored the ache of grief in her ribs. “It’s for looking forward, and — ”

“And seeing my bride?”

“No!” Brigid poked him just underneath the knot of his tie.

_“Freddie, listen to Bridie!”_

He shifted again, and Brigid tugged the door shut until only an inch or so remained — just wide enough for her to glare through the gap. “Go on ahead and meet with the vicar. _I’ll_ escort Ada.”

“Well, I can see I’m not going to get past you.” Freddie turned the hat over and over in his fingers. He looked soft, almost nervous, and Brigid’s belly fluttered.

“I promise she looks quite the treat.”

“Oh, I never doubted that.”

Face bright, he looked younger than he had in years, as if he’d never seen the mud and trenches and ghosts of France. Brigid grew almost sad; her eyes burned. They had all grown up, sobered up, replaced youthful grins with wan smiles. She’d known him better then, back when he’d been wire-thin and sharp as a tack — before he’d abandoned them for his pamphlets and speeches and revolutions.

“You’d better be a good husband, Freddie Thorne, or I’ll cut you in your sleep,” Brigid said, swallowing the lump in her throat.

Freddie’s smirk returned; he winked. “Aye, and you won’t miss, either.”

And then, Brigid shut the door with more of a slam than a quiet _snick_, turning to brace herself against it as Ada giggled.

“Right,” she breathed, clapping her hands together as if to startle herself from her reverie, “let’s get you married.”

They had only a half-hour before the ceremony was meant to start. As Ada swiped a golden tube of berry-pink lipstick over her lips, Brigid fetched her veil of lace and tulle and baby’s breath. Her fingertips shook as she swept the long veil over the crown of Ada’s head, and her chest ached as she looked at her, horribly, wonderfully reminded of Martha. Her near brown curls tucked under the veil, her blue eyes shining, Ada looked —

“Perfect,” Brigid whispered for the second time that day. She smoothed a hand down the satin curve of Ada’s shoulder, her heart warm and pounding with pride. “He won’t know what’s hit him.”

* * *

The dark, pregnant clouds in the distance finally overtook the bright sun, throwing Birmingham in an odd, purple light. Mist clung to the brim of her delicate spring hat, which had afforded her pale cheeks little protection from the sun; now, Brigid welcomed it. So it was that she maintained her path down the cobblestoned street rather than ducking under eaves and shop awnings, continuing to dodge harried women and excited children as they rushed out of the rain.

Freddie and Ada had been married in a small Stechford chapel with only Brigid and a “good mate” of Freddie’s — who Brigid had never seen, let alone met — as witnesses. Though Ada had certainly always dreamed of a large, glittery, glamorous wedding, she looked at home on Freddie’s arm.

Most importantly, the newlyweds would be in London before Tommy found out, and Brigid twisted his ring around and around her finger, dodging a fresh rain puddle.

Ahead, a weather-beaten farmer’s cart had overturned, strewing spring cabbages and leeks and their woven baskets across the lane. Though the farmer attempted to calm his stomping, snorting donkey, an automobile had stalled on the other side of the hubbub, and the driver laid on the horn, startling the donkey once more. A small crowd had gathered; as Brigid watched, a skinny boy dashed forward to grab a leek in each hand as the distracted farmer yelled at the driver.

Thunder grumbled down the lanes with a keening, electric energy, and for the first time, Brigid glanced up at the bruise-colored clouds with trepidation. Pausing, she hiked her bag — laden with nearly her entire sewing kit — higher on her shoulder. A fat raindrop landed on her top lip, tasting of soot.

Small Heath was close, and dodging down the adjacent alleyway would at least allow her to miss the mess ahead. It stunk of days-old rubbish and the evidence of a night too-well spent, but the four-storied tenement housing on either side could protect her from the worst of the incoming rain. Rarely did she view her city with disgust, but Brigid allowed herself to cover her nose as she stepped over shattered glass —

“Fancy meeting you here, Miss Murphy.”

Stopping short, Brigid slipped in a puddle, hissed when it splashed up her stockinged ankles — and something numbing, equally oily and cold, leaked down her spine.

Down the alleyway, a tall, stooping figure emerged from behind a six-high stack of splintered whiskey crates. Heavy tobacco smoke clouded his face, but the small ember in his pipe shone through the shadows.

“Inspector Campbell.” Brigid straightened, curling a hand low on the strap of her bag. “I wouldn’t have thought the Chief Inspector would be saddled with routine patrols.”

Whether because he didn’t have to or simply because he didn’t want to, the Inspector did not respond.

The dim, watery light from the far end of the alley silhouetted him as he drew closer, his boots clicking slow and sure on the dirty pavement. The commotion from the lane behind her — the farmer and the driver and the assembled crowd — echoed, odd and warbled, and Brigid, inexplicably, figured no one was likely to hear her if she screamed. She thought of the switchblade deep in the bottom of her bag, the one Tommy had told her to keep in her coat pocket —

_Where you can get to it before someone can get to you._

She thought of her long lost cousin and the dark alleyway where he’d been seen last.

Campbell sidestepped a pile of old, wet newspaper, finally close enough for Brigid to see his face through the thick smoke of his pipe, which curled upward to join the thick clouds. Though he didn’t speak, the corner of his mouth lifted in what might have passed for a smile on a kinder face.

“There’s a ruckus in the lane, sir, that might benefit from some calm leadership,” Brigid said, delicate; nervous fingers tightened around the strap of her bag. He was so close the mouth of the alleyway had disappeared beyond him, and she shifted. “If you don’t mind — ”

But as she attempted to sidestep his wide figure, Campbell’s gloved had shot out to block her path. Brigid recoiled from his touch, the alley and its black bricks closing in.

“Sir?”

The mist had collected on the brim of his bowler hat; it dripped, hissing on the pipe, as he finally spoke. “I had thought we reached an understanding, Miss Murphy — that day in your home. But you haven’t been as forthcoming as I’d hoped.”

“I’m not sure what you’re referring to, Inspector.” Wetting her lips, Brigid attempted to step back, but her shoulder blades met the sticky brick of the alley wall.

“Why didn’t you tell me your cousin had arrived in Birmingham?”

Something shifted on his pockmarked face, dark and hard, all false congeniality lost. Above, the clouds cracked and heaved, sending an electric tremble down Brigid’s spine. She peered upward, single, fat drop of rain landing on her cheekbone, and remembered the promise her foolish tongue had made during their first meeting.

“I never agreed to be your informant.” She weighed her words, shifting to the side again to glance over his shoulder.“Now, if you’ll excuse me — ”

“Give me your bag.” Inspector Campbell held out a gloved hand, its black leather as oily as the bricks in the low light.

Shaking her head, Brigid tightened the fingers fisted around the strap of her bag. Nerves fluttered in her throat, but she fought to keep her voice polite. “I’ve done nothing wrong, sir.”

As she attempted to step away, Brigid’s modest heel caught in the slat of a broken wooden crate — she lurched forward to avoid slipping, too uncertain to turn her back to him. Gritting her teeth against the hot wave of embarrassment, Brigid attempted to step by him again, and —

His hand clasped her wrist, twisting until she cried out and her fingers slipped from the strap of her bag. His other tore the heavy bag from her shoulder.

“I’m Chief Inspector of this city,” he growled, the syllables scraping together like gravel, “and if I want to search you, I will.”

Brigid’s cheeks burned underneath the cool mist, left feeling sorely bare, holding her smarting wrist in the opposite hand. As he chewed on his tobacco pipe, a lone wisp of smoke curled over the damp brim of his hat. In the depths of her bag, coins clinked; papers scratched. What might he find — racing papers or betting slips, her switchblade, the spare key to the betting shop? With each fear, her lungs tightened.

He nearly growled as he shook her coin purse out onto the wet, dirty ground, a poor collection of shillings and pence spilling out; the small leather pouch followed. “How long has your cousin been in this city, Miss Murphy?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” she said, swiping a loose, mist-damp curl from her eyes.

“Tracking the movement of Fenians,” he drawled, eyes fierce, “will always be my business.”

_Fenian scum_, he’d called her that morning in her dark, splintered parlor. His prejudice wasn’t unexpected, but it still caused the stone pit of nerves in Brigid’s chest to fall to her stomach.

She pursed her lips. “Not every Irishman is a Republican.”

Behind her, the donkey neighed; yelling echoed down the alley from the lane. Campbell’s terrible eyes shifted over her shoulder, but instead of leaving to do his duty, he stepped even closer.

“The Black Swan Inn,” he began, shaking her back as if to dislodge anything she had sewn into its lining, “is a known gathering place for members of the Irish Republican Army. What do you know of this?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Your father drinks there, as he has for twenty years. Your cousin now works there.” Without looking up, Campbell withdrew his fist from her bag, lifted it to his nose to sniff. “And yet you claim to not know its patronage?”

Not for the first time, the knowledge he possessed of her family crawled up the back of her throat, sticking in her teeth like treacle.

“No, sir — ” Lightning crackled across the thin gap above between two black-slated roofs, and Brigid wet her lips, starting again. “I’m a woman, sir. They don’t speak to me about much of anything.”

Campbell nodded as if they were sharing a friendly conversation over tea; his gloved fist, the one he’d raised to his nose, was still clasped tightly. “Curious,” he said. “I’ve found the women can be as dangerous as the men.”

And then, he proffered his hand. Flat in his palm was a smudged, sticky tin, and the sight of it twisted around Brigid’s heart.

“Do you have a prescription for this opium, Miss Murphy?”

_Christ_, she was a fool. She’d chucked Tommy’s pipe as far down the Cut as she could, watched as it sunk under the canal’s oily veneer to join his medals and every other part of him she’d lost to the war. His little brass lamp had been next, and then the tickling ring of instruments, but —

But she’d forgotten the fucking tin.

Brigid’s pulse jumped in her throat. “I — ”

But she choked herself off, for what could she say? She _didn’t_, and Tommy certainly hadn’t procured the unlabelled tin from a licensed chemist.

“Because, if you do not, I would be within my rights as Chief Inspector to take you into custody.” The flash in his blue eyes was almost evil; the slow twist of his smirk, even more so. “And then, we can discuss exactly what you know about your scum fiancé, his gambling enterprise, and that little razor gang he uses to terrorize the good people of this city.”

He stepped forward, pipe smoldering, until he was so close she could feel his heat in the sticky, dank alley. Underneath the stench of old alcohol and sick, opium clung in the thick air. Brigid felt she could hardly breathe through the smoke and the damp, not with him so close.

“And then, we’ll discuss exactly what it is you know about the I.R.A.” Campbell wasn’t done, and his smirk twisted into something almost grotesque. “We can do it privately — if you would prefer.”

Retreating until her back was against the damp alley wall, Brigid pressed her gloved fingers into the brick to steady herself. She sucked a breath into her queasy belly, weighing the cruelty in his eyes against —

The _desperation_ she’d seen in Tommy’s, that first time outside of her father’s house when he’d begged her to stay out of it; the fear, when he’d found her bloody and scared in her parlor; the anger, the last time she’d seen him, when he’d as good as spat in her face outside of the Garrison.

He’d told her to stay out of it so many times — but how could she, when she was trapped between an alley wall and the Inspector himself?

Brigid wet her lips, distinctly aware of how his eyes followed the motion. “I know you’re not here to root out Republicans, Inspector Campbell.”

“I’m not?” He raised a single brow, adjusting the pipe in his twisted lips.

“No, you’re looking for something.” _Machine guns. Rifles. Enough ammunition to light up a city._ “You said it yourself — so don’t feign an arrest you won’t make. Just ask me.”

The silence between them dragged like a humid, sleepless night, and he dropped the tin of opium into his coat pocket, tilted his head as if curious — or impressed. With a force that didn’t match the placid lines of his face, he shoved her heavy bag into her hands; Brigid scrambled to collect it before it could fall to the dirty ground.

“Miss Murphy, you’re in no position to give me orders.”

With it in her possession, the familiar weight over her shoulder and the smooth leather strap under her fingertips, Brigid finally felt as if the ground had stopped rocking underneath her. _You don’t know when to keep your mouth shut, _Tommy had said, the cut of his mouth vicious, and —

“Well, I’m in no position to be arrested for opium possession, either, so I’m hedging my bet.”

And perhaps he was right.

Brigid’s heartbeat was in her fingertips, pounding against the sharp cut of alley brick, but — she couldn’t deny the bloom of victory in her chest as Campbell’s pockmarked face darkened, as his eyes narrowed.

Campbell huffed a laugh and considered her words, chewing on his pipe all the while. His boot heels clicked on the old, cracked pavement as he paced away from her. “You learned that from your grandfather, no doubt.”

Breathing into the space he had given her, Brigid steeled her nerves, peeled herself from the wall to stand up straight. She couldn’t afford to give in to his intimidation, and neither could Tommy.

“What do you want to know, Inspector, truly?”

Spinning on a single heel, Campbell fixed her with sharp eyes, bright in the dark alley. Above them, thunder rumbled again — this time, much closer, grumbling over cobblestoned lanes and slate roofs. The storm was coming, and quickly, but she couldn’t run.

She needed to know what he wanted, what he _knew._

He finally plucked the pipe from his lips, pointing it in her direction as he spoke. “Near six weeks ago, now, a shipment of machine guns was stolen from the proofing bay of the Birmingham Small Arms factory. Did you know this?”

“No,” she lied.

“Do you know who’s responsible?” He paced in front of her, his shadow rippling in a puddle of rain and soot.

“No,” she repeated, and, this time, the relief of the truth bloomed in her chest.

At his feet were the coins discarded from her coin purse; he squashed the leather pouch under a single heel as he turned. “Are you lying to me again?”

“No.”

Campbell’s smile curdled in Brigid’s stomach. The first time they met, she’d been careful to match every one — for men could be so easily offended, after all — but as she twisted Tommy’s ring around and around her finger, she felt no such need. He’d robbed her of eight shillings and who-knows-how-many pence, and she was ten minutes from having her nicest spring dress soaked through.

“You could have asked me these questions during your raid,” she said, voice prim, careful, “but you didn’t. What’s changed?”

He’d shared more with her in five minutes than he had with anyone for the duration of his early morning rampage, and as Brigid chewed on the inside of her cheek, she could only wonder _why_. What did he suspect, and who? And why had he brought his questions to her?

Across the skinny alleyway, Campbell considered his tobacco pipe, and as the sky above them darkened, so did his eyes.

“I’ve reason to believe the I.R.A. is in the market to buy these stolen guns.” He snuffed the bowl of his pipe with a callused thumb, turned it over and over in his hands; ash dusted from the bowl to his feet. “I’m sure you can understand, Miss Murphy — that cannot happen. It will not happen.”

Slowly, the puzzle pieces began to fall together, and the picture they built was ugly. Words sour, she said, “And you think Jack is here to buy them.”

“Smart girl.” He nodded, almost conciliatory, and pointed to her with the stem of his pipe. “You can see, now, that _you_ are the interesting intersection of these investigations.”

“Well, I’m not.” Brigid grit her teeth — in her mind’s eye, she pictured the jut of Patrick’s chin; the jump in Tommy’s jaw — and crossed her arms over her chest as if to hide her pounding heart. “I don’t know who has those guns, and so I couldn’t sell them even if I wanted to. My cousin is here for employment — nothing more.”

Lightning cracked again; thunder growled. As Inspector Campbell tucked his pipe into the inside pocket of his overcoat, the thick sheet of rain arrived. It swept down the alleyway, slipping under the neat hem of Brigid’s dress; it lashed at her neck and dripped down the valley of her chest. With it came a restlessness, and Brigid’s teeth chattered.

“If you aren’t the intermediary between these parties, Miss Murphy, then will you help me discover who is?”

Under the weight of the gray rain, Brigid’s spring hat drooped, and she wrestled the hatpin from her nest of curls — she would be soaked to the bone before she reached Number Six, so there was no need to protect her hair. The brief struggle gave her a long moment to gulp down the knot in her throat.

“No,” she said, tucking her hat into the depths of her bag. For good measure, she kept the hatpin clutched in a single fist. “Forgive me, Inspector, but you’ve done little to earn my trust.”

The smirk was back. “I could try.”

“Pardon?” As she spat sour city rain from her mouth, Brigid moved to step by him. This time, the hand that clasped around her upper arm was almost gentle.

“I do believe your cousin, Joseph Doyle, is still considered missing by the Belfast authorities.” Campbell quirked his head, eyes narrowing as his smirk stretched. “I could close that case. Your family could have peace, even a funeral — for a price.”

And Brigid’s lungs felt like they might cave in, taking her breath and her heart with them. His implication was clear — _Joe is dead, and I know where we dumped the body._ The olive branch had been extended, but it wilted under the weight of his sneer, his disdain.

“No, thank you, Inspector,” Brigid said, wishing her voice hadn’t wobbled. When her eyes burned, she blinked furiously, blaming the sooty rain. “We don’t need your charity.”

Underneath the dripping brim of his beaver hat, Campbell’s brows jumped. “Very well.”

His hand slipped from her arm, trailing perhaps a second too long — long enough for the sour taste of bile to rise from her rocking stomach. Campbell stepped back from her, slipping his hands into the pockets of his overcoat as he gazed across the alley. Brigid became distinctly aware of the way the rain darkened the thin cotton of her dress, and she crossed her arms over her chest, uneasy, as the rain slipped down her spine.

“I _am_ surprised you attended Miss Shelby’s wedding, given that your fiancé doesn’t approve of the union.” He tilted his head, considering her as rain poured from the brim of his hat. “Does he know you’re working against him, Miss Murphy?”

Bristling, Brigid drew herself up to her full height, hardened her expression. “My relationship is hardly your business, Inspector.”

“Oh, but it is.”

And he finally turned, sure boot heels clicking on the dirty alley ground as returned the way he came — for he’d only been following her from the chapel, she knew now, with nothing waiting for him further into Small Heath.

His tinny voice echoed back. “Of course, it is. Have a good day, Miss Murphy.”

Inspector Campbell didn’t stop or turn again, shoulders drawn back, confident through the sheet of gray rain. And Brigid waited until he’d disappeared around the corner at the end of the alleyway before she let herself wilt. The strength she’d summoned gave way; her knees buckled with the force of her exhale.

If Campbell had meant to rattle her, he’d succeeded.

But was it only his general demeanor — the smirk, the smug words — that left her feeling exposed? Feeling stupid? _Does he know you’re working against him, Miss Murphy?_

God, how foolish she’d been — to skip around Small Heath as if she wasn’t being watched, as if Tommy Shelby’s ring wasn’t as good as a target painted on her back.

The hard, sticky alley brick dug into the base of her spine where she’d gone boneless. Steady, if uncomfortable, it brought her back to the present moment — the rain that slipped down her jaw and neck and chest; the sharp crack of lightning the streaked above her head; the distant church bells that chimed noontime. She needed to get back to the shop, to get _home_.

Brigid peaked around the corner of the alleyway, searching for a pipe ember or a bowler hat, before stepping out into the lane proper. Without the semblance of protection from the alley walls, a gust of wind stole the breath from her lungs; rain splashed up to knees as she dashed down Watery Lane, dodging harried passersby with newspapers held aloft and squealing, half-dressed children jumping in puddles. Ahead, a black-coated man stepped from the betting shop door, and she darted forward to catch the brass knob before it could fall shut.

The shop was unbearably damp; the back windows shone with drying rainwater as if they’d been propped open and promptly closed when the storm swept in. Scudboat, sat at the first desk, had sweat through the armpits of his pinstriped shirt, sleeves rolled to his elbows.

His hard face settled into a smirk at the sight of her. “Here to place a bet, ma’am?”

“Don’t be a wanker,” Brigid muttered, swiping wet curls from her forehead. “Is…”

But who did she need? Her heart still throbbed in her throat, making it hard to swallow — she wanted Tommy and his sure hands and steady eyes, but they hadn’t even spoken since that night outside of the Garrison —

Across the shop, Polly emerged through the emerald double doors that connected the shop to Number Six proper; the sigh that ripped from Brigid’s lips was involuntary but welcome.

Without bidding farewell to Scudboat, she skittered across the shop, ducked around desks and runners, smiled through _hello_s and _how-are-you_s to grip Polly’s hands in her own. The older woman’s dark eyes settled on her with the weight of a winter quilt, the question in them creeping up Brigid’s damp neck. She shook her head, nudging Polly back through the shop doors until they were alone in the kitchen.

As the heavy curtain swished and settled behind them, Brigid finally muttered, “They’re married.”

“Well, that’s the good news I needed.” Polly mused with a smile, even as her eyes fell to their clasped hands. “What’s wrong?”

Her cold hands trembled in Polly’s, and the older woman rubbed them together as if to generate warmth. But Brigid gaped, feeling as if a hand had clasped around her throat and trapped the words there. She focused on the lace of Polly’s collar, delicately folded over her polka-dotted tie; it fluttered as Polly drew her closer.

Polly patted thin fingers over Brigid’s knuckles. “What is it, love? We agreed — I’ll tell Tommy. Don’t you worry.”

“It’s not Tommy.” Or was it? Brigid’s head felt like a scrambled egg, and the conversation with Campbell slipped around and slid through her fingers. “It’s Campbell. He knew about Ada and Freddie.”

Concern knit Polly’s brows together, and she leaned even closer. “Campbell?”

“He followed me from the chapel,” she whispered, still staring somewhere around Polly’s collar as she attempted to untangle the threads of conversation, “and he knew that Tommy didn’t approve of the wedding.”

“What did he say?” Polly had gone pale, and Brigid finally met those dark eyes — usually warm and knowing, they had narrowed.

Brigid frowned; she shook her head. “Just that he was surprised I’d attended the wedding. Asked if Tommy knew — ”

“The bastard — ”

“But _how_ did he know, Polly?” Brigid squeezed her hands, the words soft, and shivered. The wet cotton of her dress had gone stiff, leaving her cold in the warmth of the kitchen. “He followed me — do you think he’s following Tommy? But how would he know — ”

The _rip_ of the velvet curtain behind her cut Brigid off; startled, she spun around and stumbled back into Polly, who steadied birdlike fingers at her waist.

Stood where the curtains had been was Tommy, rain-damp himself. The humidity had flushed his cheeks, darkened his hair and the gray of his suit; the sight of him sunk into Brigid’s chest like a stone through water.

“What are you two whispering about, eh?” He pulled the cap from his head, shaking the rain from its brim, and ducked by them.

With the curtains left open, the general bustle of the betting shop filled the otherwise silent kitchen — men grumbling, boots shuffling, chalk scratching. The phone rang, and John suddenly appeared where he hadn’t been a second prior to press the handset to his ear. He caught her eye across the shop, winking.

“Just telling fortunes,” Polly muttered, patting the hand at Brigid’s waist. “Go on, love — hang that dress up and fetch something of Ada’s.”

Across the kitchen, Tommy dropped his cap to the tabletop; he tugged off his dripping suit jacket and tossed it over the back of a kitchen chair, surely, confidently. He hardly looked in her direction, even though it was the first time she’d seen him since that night Billy Kimber walked into the Garrison with a gun and Tommy walked out with a plan —

Since he admitted he was taking Grace to Cheltenham.

Brigid pursed her lips, something dangerous rolling in her belly. She should listen to Polly and change from her sodden dress before she caught her death; a shiver wracked up her spine and into her jaw, cracking her teeth together, and —

“Why do you want to run Freddie Thorne out of town?”

Her tongue betrayed her again, and Tommy froze.

To his left atop the sideboard, the old oil lamp popped; the muscle in his jaw jumped as he ground his teeth against the sound. “Brigid, we’ve already spoken about this — ”

“No,” she interjected, the adrenaline from Inspector Campbell’s appearance shaking in her fingertips. “You made something up, and we listened because we always do. But I’m asking, now, Tommy — what deal have you made?”

Polly’s fingers, previously pressed into the ridges of Brigid’s spine, disappeared. With them went the air in the room. Though his face remained solemn, Tommy fumbled into the pocket of his discarded suit jacket for his silver cigarette tin. He flicked open the top, fetched a single cigarette, struck a match along the rough side of the tin — every action careful, planned, as if he had forgotten how to light a cigarette and was thinking through each task.

And Brigid knew, somewhere deep in her chest where her heart should have been, that she had him.

The sharp _snick_ of the betting shop’s doors broke the silence, cutting them off from the bustle of the betting shop; only the rush of rain outside was left.

Polly, her lips pursed into a flat line, flicked her dark eyes between them. “Well, if we’re going to have this conversation, we might as well do it in private.”

Composed as always, almost business-like — remarkably like her nephew — Polly ushered Brigid closer to the kitchen table. There, Tommy leaned forward on both hands, his fresh cigarette smoldering in the ashtray. Polly helped herself to another, crossing her ankles underneath her chair as the match struck.

“Now, I know you two need a moderator these days,” Polly said, pointing the cigarette first at Brigid and then to Tommy, “so we’ll talk about this like adults.”

But Tommy hardly looked to his aunt, and his hand curled into a white-knuckled fist over the scuffed tabletop. “Brigid, this is not business that concerns you.”

Had she been a better person, she might have let it go.

“No, it _is_ my business.”

Brigid herself leaned forward over the table — as short as she was when compared to him, it was much less impressive, but something burning and righteous swelled in her lungs and made her feel taller. “Whether you like it or not, it’s my business, because _I’m_ the one Campbell is cornering in alleyways. _I’m_ the one he’s searching and questioning.”

“What?” Surprise was an unfamiliar look on Tommy Shelby — the wide eyes and parted lips, the harsh cut of his words.

But even in her damp dress, Brigid felt hot, flushed up to her ears with delayed embarrassment — with the memory of Campbell’s hand around her wrist and the smirk on his pockmarked face as stood across from him, trapped like a beetle underneath a boot heel.

“_I’m_ the one he thinks is trying to sell those goddamn guns to the I.R.A., of all people, because my parents _dared_ to be Irish — ”

Polly held up a hand, coughing out cigarette smoke. “Now, Brigid — ”

“So, don’t you stand there and tell me that this isn’t my fucking business, Thomas Shelby, because whatever business you have with Campbell, he’s _making_ it mine.”

Brigid was left breathless, heaving through the last of her whispered tirade. On the other side of the doors, the betting shop still hummed, after all, even though the kitchen of Number Six had fallen to a deathly silence. The air was terribly thick with tea leaves and smoke and dried herbs and must, but Brigid sucked it into her belly anyway.

Tommy stood still as a statue; between them, Polly had gone pale.

“Polly?” For the first time, Brigid felt sick, and she turned fully to the older woman. “Polly, what do you know? What are you two _fucking_ hiding?”

“Damnit, Brigid, just — ” Tommy cut himself off as he hung his head, voice hardly more than a growl. “Let me _think_.”

The burning in her chest worked its way down to her fingertips, which she threw to the ceiling in disbelief. “What’s there to think about? Just tell the truth!”

But her plea sounded like desperation, for no matter how furious she got, no matter how much she screamed, the fact remained that she was the one in the dark — the one deliberately _kept_ in the dark. She’d been the one left useless and defenseless when the godforsaken Chief Inspector of their city had her with her back against the wall. His pale blue stare lingered in her mind, crawling over her skin even in the safety of Number Six.

And Tommy’s eyes had been closed, that day surrounded by her mother’s shattered porcelain, when he informed her of Campbell’s mission.

The realization tasted acrid like blood, foul like bile.

Heart pounding somewhere in her throat, Brigid said, “You have those guns, don’t you?” Tommy closed his eyes, and she pressed forward. “That’s why he thinks I’m the go-between — because my family is Irish, and you stole those bloody guns.”

Beyond the double doors, the shop’s phone rang, a shrill sound to crack the silence between them. With it, Tommy finally met her gaze.

“We didn’t steal them on purpose.” His voice barely crested a whisper; the table groaned underneath him as he leaned his full weight against it. “The boys took the wrong crate from the factory.”

“So, you _kept_ them?” Brigid’s brows jumped to her hairline; somewhere in the back of her mind, she wished that she could summon more surprise. “Have you lost your mind?”

Tommy’s head fell, his damp fringe hiding the frustration in his eyes from her; nevertheless, it rolled off him in waves, like the heat from a live burner under a tea kettle. “Of course, I kept them. Why do you think we haven’t had a runner lifted in six weeks? Why do you think we’re finally able to make a move onto the tracks? _Think_, Brigid.”

Polly held up a hand, interjecting, “Thomas, do not be rude — ”

“The coppers are letting us do what we want because they know the minute they move against us,” he continued, pointing a single finger to the street as if the police were posted just outside, “I sell those guns to the highest fucking bidder.”

Brigid swallowing the lump in her throat as her vision blurred — not from tears or rain, but anger — and let his words fall between them. She doubted a moment of reflection would teach Tommy Shelby the error of his ways, but her mother had known the strength of a well-placed silence. A single flash of her brown eyes, or a quick twist of her lips, had been all she needed to have a young Brigid groveling for forgiveness when she skulked home after dark, when she shucked her chores, when she whinged about Patrick being allowed to do whatever he wanted.

Crossing her arms over the stiff placket of her dress, Brigid, finally, chose her words carefully. “So, this whole time you were telling me that we would be safe, that Campbell was after communists and nothing more, that the guns weren’t our concern — you were lying to _me_, and licking _his_ boots?”

“I met with him and laid out my terms,” Tommy cut in, voice sharp. “It was a fair negotiation. They turn a blind eye to our operations for the time being, and I give them the guns when I’ve got what I want.”

“Which is what?” Brigid burst, ignoring the quick _shush_ of Polly’s lips, the flash of Tommy’s pale, icy eyes. “I _told_ you, Tommy, that these people aren’t to be fucking bargained with! He will gut you like a fish the second you step out of line.”

How many people had run to Birmingham with their own horror stories of exactly what _bargaining_ with Belfast coppers looked like? How many brothers and sons and fathers had they lost?

Polly stubbed out her cigarette with a frustrated sigh. “Now, I’m not happy about it either, but — ”

“But that’s how business is done,” Tommy finished, his mouth pressed in a firm line. “You don’t have to like it —

“Don’t _patronize_ me,” Brigid nearly snarled, smacking a hand on the tabletop. The crystal ashtray rattled; Polly jumped in her chair. “He killed my cousin, and he admitted it to my face not half an hour ago.”

Tommy’s blue eyes were terribly bright, hard as granite as he stared across at her. For the briefest moment, she thought a flicker of recognition, an acknowledgment of the pain that cracked open her lungs and left her last syllables wanting, crossed his face. For the first time since she leveled her first question at him, he straightened his spine, turned his back to her as he crossed to the back window.

The storm had left Small Heath strange, almost purple. The sight of it over his shoulder left Brigid feeling hollow.

“Those guns,” he said, the syllables grumbling together like the day’s thunder, “are the only reason he hasn’t brought us in on racketeering and robbery charges. It’s the _only_ thing standing between us and a fucking inquisition.”

He tucked his hands deep into his trouser pockets, the muscles of his shoulders shifting under his waistcoat. Brigid hated the sight of him, how even now she admired the cut of his back —

How, for the first time, it felt distinctly like they were playing for different teams.

Brigid avoided Polly’s dark eyes as she straightened as well, willing to admit that the discussion was over. Smoothing her hands down the crinkled front of her stiff dress, wet curls prickling at the back of her neck, she said, “Well, the next time you see our dear Inspector Campbell, renegotiate the terms regarding Freddie Thorne.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means he and Ada were married this morning in Stechford, and they don’t have any plans to leave the city.” A rueful smirk stretched across Brigid’s cheeks; his head tilted in the silhouette of the back window. “They have our support, after all — I stood as a witness in the wedding.”

“What?”

Tommy turned just as Brigid attempted to pass by him to dash upstairs, shot out a hand — he caught her by the shoulder, his fingers unintentionally slipping underneath the collar of her dress to meet her heated skin. Brigid shivered, jerking back; gooseflesh prickled up her arms.

A pale hand reached up to smooth rain-damp hair from his forehead. “You did _what_?”

“You heard me.” Brigid furrowed her brow, the stone of his ring cutting into her palm when she tightened her hands into fists. “Doesn’t feel so nice, does it, to be the one in the dark?”

And she spun on a single heel, cheeks burning, to stalk up the stairs.

Tommy’s frustrated sigh followed her up the stairwell; the vindictive part of Brigid’s heart was pleased to know he was even half as frustrated as she was. But she kept climbing to Ada’s bedroom on the second landing, anyway, mind racing, heartbeat throbbing in her chest and her mouth and her fingertips. The blood singing in her ears, high-pitched, felt dangerous, almost invigorating.

Perhaps she’d been foolish to hope that Tommy would put their family before the business. Or perhaps he was _right_.

That was what truly scared her.

But, she wouldn’t give in. Brigid had spent half her life apologizing — it was past time for Tommy Shelby to learn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, let me know what you think - what made you mad, what got you happy, what made you cry! there's nothing like hearing from y'all :)
> 
> or we could chat on [tumblr](https://aryaflint.tumblr.com/)?
> 
> ...
> 
> 10/14/20 UPDATE: hey y'all! it's still an exhausting time to be an american. sorry for going ghost for so long. i’m currently working 60+ hours/week between my full time job and volunteer campaign shifts (are you registered to vote??), and my cousin just had her baby! his early arrival took up the free time i’d planned to use to polish off ch15 this week. rest assured it’ll be on its way to you soon. i’ve been so humbled and happy that y’all are still here (or tumblr!) and ready to read when i can get back to brigid and tommy, and i’m sick of keeping them to myself! sorry about that ❤️
> 
> (forreal tho are you registered to vote? do you have a plan to vote? brigid would vote democrats up and down the ballot, just saying 😩)


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